Why did Sui choose to build an existing blockchain from scratch rather than fork?

Why doesn\'t Mysten Labs just fork at Ethereum or Solana?

Sui was built from scratch because its engineering team (most of whom had been involved in Meta\'s Diem project) needed a data model and programming language that existing blockchains could not provide. Forking Ethereum or Solana means inheriting an account-based ledger that can only process transactions in order. This structure cannot achieve the sub-second finality and parallel execution that the team pursues.

Sui\'s founders are from Mysten Labs, who previously worked on Meta\'s Diem (formerly Libra) project. After Diem closed for regulatory reasons in 2022, the team retained two things: the Move programming language and practical experience of trying to transfer digital assets on an Internet scale. Forking an existing chain inherits its core limitations. Ethereum\'s account model updates a global ledger, resulting in unrelated transactions still having to be queued in order. Although Solana can achieve high throughput, it relies on increasingly powerful dedicated validator hardware rather than horizontal expansion. Neither chain is designed around Move, so if you don\'t rewrite a separate virtual machine after the fork, you can\'t take advantage of Move\'s asset security. Instead of patching these limitations, the team designed a new object-centric data model and paired it with a new consensus engine.

What problem is Sui trying to solve?

The core problem is simple: As blockchain users increase, speeds usually slow down and costs rise. Sui\'s architecture treats each asset (a token, an NFT, a contract state) as a separate object with a unique ID and owner, rather than a row of records in a shared ledger. Since most transactions only touch objects that the sender already owns, the validator can immediately determine whether the two transactions are unrelated.

Independent transactions are executed in parallel

A SUI transfer and an unrelated NFT transaction between two wallets do not have to wait for each other. Sui processes them at the same time, rather than queuing them like Ethereum\'s sequential model.

How does the consensus mechanism integrate into this design?

Sui divides the transaction into two paths. Simple transfers involving only owned objects skip full consensus and complete final confirmation after signing by the verifier. Transactions involving shared objects, such as decentralized exchange pools, are processed through the Mysticeti protocol, a directed acyclic graph consensus protocol that will be launched on the main network in July 2024. Mysticeti removed the leader-based bottleneck of its predecessors, Narwhal and Bullshark, and based on internal benchmarks, transactions were submitted in approximately 390 milliseconds under real-world network conditions.

Why the Move language is crucial here

Move treats digital assets as resources that cannot be copied or accidentally destroyed, a rule that is enforced by the language itself rather than relying on the self-discipline of developers. This eliminates a common type of error in Solidity-in Solidity, the balance is just a number in the map and can be tampered with if the code is defective.

What is Sui\'s current position?

As of early July 2026, the SUI transaction price is approximately US$0.72 to US$0.74, with approximately US$4 billion in the fixed supply of 10 billion tokens in circulation. In the first half of 2026, the network\'s total DeFi locked value was roughly between US$440 million and US$900 million, down from a peak of approximately US$2.5 billion at the end of 2025, reflecting a broader market correction and token unlocking pressure, rather than changes in the underlying architecture. Currently, about 100 validators protect the network through delegated certificates of stake.

Conclusion

Sui\'s approach to building from scratch brings an object-centric parallel execution model, a Move language to ensure asset security, and a Mysticeti consensus to achieve sub-second finality for shared object transactions. These three components work together precisely because they are designed as a whole, rather than being tinkered on existing chain rules.