SUI-t Dreams Are Made of This

One of the defining perspectives of this rag is that The Future Is Multi-Chain.™️

Our publication’s name may paint us as Solana maxis. (And, when it comes to the clearest path to web3 adoption, we most certainly are.) But in terms of a feasible, functional DeFi future, it’s hard to imagine one that doesn’t rely on an intricate symphony of blockchains working together.

In other words, there probably won’t be a world where, say, Ethereum becomes the dominant blockchain on which all future tokens and NFTs and shitcoins are minted, finally beating out Bitcoin like the world’s worst WWE storyline. Rather, the durable ecosystems will likely be the ones that find ways to work together, building a coexisting network of chains humming in the background, on which useful tools can be built and/or tasks completed. Like, for example, a digital identity management company or open software provider, enabling consumers to reclaim and custodize [sic] their data.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to just take our word for it. We brought supporting evidence for our multi-chain thesis. Chainlink — the once-exclusive $ETH focused solution — recently announced it is bringing its data oracle system natively to Solana’s blockchain.

This is something that I, as a long time supporter of the Link brigade, am truly happy to hear. (And not just because some of my fellow Xoogler’s are key leaders at that project.)

Chainlink’s primary utility is leveraging smart contracts to make stores of data from web2 environments or network ledgers (think financial price feeds, or the Ethereum ledger) available for use by another blockchain that wants to use those values to drive algorithms, which may themselves be programmed behind smart contracts. Or, simply, Chainlink links blockchains.

So it makes sense that it would expand its own reach beyond Ethereum’s limited ecosystem. And the reputation and quality that Chainlink brings by reaching out to Solana is further signal that our favorite chain is also the critical darling of this cycle.

Another relatively new blockchain system capturing my imagination with the role it could play in a multi-chain future is SUI. Like Chainlink, SUI is staffed with ex-FAANGers on a mission to actually not be evil. Specifically, most of the team is composed of members of Facebook’s shuttered blockchain project, Libra. A phoenix, risen from ashes.

SUI uses its own smart contracting language, MOVE, and a concept called Narwhal and Tusk. This means that they separate transactions from consensus. The more traditional consensus process is complex and energy-intensive, whereas through SUI, all transactions go through automatically, then enter a clean-up phase. There, less significant transactions can basically be waved through, so energy is only expended on the transactions that require extra scrutiny. Applications often require running multiple systems at the same time to make a simple feature work. SUI may be a more efficient way to do so.

In that sense, SUI seems to me to be the Jelly to Solana’s peanut butter. On SUI, one could feasibly build a digital identity management protocol that supports privacy persevering apps using a combination of the two. Solana, the global, real-time database; SUI, the front-end, functional computer. 

SUI’s native token is currently trading around $2 and is a little over a year old. As a longtime degen, it honestly gives me Solana 2020 vibes. And while I won’t speculate on the price of this solution, the Ethereum ecosystem continues to confirm my hypothesis that blockchains don’t grow exponentially, but rather become bottlenecked by their communities, and subsequently out-competed by smaller and more nimble chains that build on their learnings.

Here’s hoping Solana has taken note of that too. If not, SUI could be the ideal replacement next cycle, which would potentially mean the time to buy in is now.

—El Prof