A new blockchain network, which had received a lot of funding from venture capitalists, recently launched its main network. However, during the launch, it had some difficulties with processing transactions quickly and being fully decentralized, despite being positioned as a competitor to the established Aptos network.
A new blockchain called Sui, which is valued at $2 billion, launched its main network on Wednesday. It is trying to compete with other big names in the world of decentralized finance, like Aptos which is backed by Facebook.
Currently, the token is being traded at $1.33 which is much higher than the price during the pre-sale ($0.03) and public sale ($0.10) of the token. As per CoinGecko, the market value of the token is $687 million.
The blockchain was created by former employees of Meta and has over 200 projects listed on it. Additionally, there are more than 100 other projects that are interested in building on this blockchain network.
The developers of Sui had promised quick transaction speeds, but on Wednesday the actual speed was only around four transactions per second (4tps), as per the data from Sui’s blockchain explorer. In comparison, Aptos is currently able to process transactions at a speed of 9tps.
- However, Sui encountered some obstacles when it came to achieving full decentralization.
There are currently over 2,100 nodes that are operating on Sui’s network and are spread out across 43 countries. However, most of these nodes are located in the U.S. and Germany, with only a few nodes running in Asia and eastern Europe. It’s important to keep in mind that the network is still relatively new, and over time, the validators are likely to be more evenly distributed across different locations.
- It is currently unclear how the tokens are distributed among the token holders.
Mysten Labs, which is the main contributor to the blockchain, raised $300 million through several fundraising rounds last year. This money was used to build the central infrastructure of the network and to help accelerate the adoption of the Sui ecosystem.
Sui’s success in raising a large amount of funding prior to its launch has led to comparisons with Aptos, which is also a relatively new blockchain with significant venture capital backing. The teams behind both blockchains were previously involved in Diem, which was formerly known as Libra and was a failed stablecoin project by Meta. Additionally, both blockchains use Move, a programming language that was developed by Meta, as their foundation.
Tokenomics Tussle
- Critics have blasted Sui for its tokenomics in recent weeks.
In April, Sui decided not to do an airdrop, which disappointed some of its community members. Instead, they made SUI tokens available for purchase in an early sale on three different exchanges (OKX, KuCoin, and ByBit) at a price of three cents per token. Later on, there was another token sale at a price of $0.10 per token, but it was capped at 10,000 tokens per person.
Recently, Binance made SUI available to BNB and TUSD holders through its Launchpad bootstrapping portal. However, people in the U.S. were not able to participate in the early sale program.
