Sui's roots trace back to Facebook's (later Meta's) Libra/Diem blockchain project, announced in 2019, which aimed to build a global payment network alongside the Novi digital wallet — the project shut down for good in January 2022 amid regulatory hurdles, with the Diem Association selling off its assets. Five former Meta/Novi Research engineers — Evan Cheng (CEO, previously head of R&D at Novi and Technical Director at Meta), Sam Blackshear (CTO, creator of the Move programming language), Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis, and Kostas Chalkias — founded Mysten Labs in November 2021, in Palo Alto.
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Mysten Labs raised over $330 million across two funding rounds in 2022.
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The name “Sui” comes from the Japanese word for “water” — reflected in the naming of the native token (SUI) and its smallest unit (MIST), as well as the brand's visual identity.
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May 2023: a token sale raises $49.37 million, priced at $0.10 per SUI.
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May 3, 2023: mainnet launches.
Sui*'s key technical differentiator is its “object-centric” architecture: instead of the traditional account-balance model, every asset is treated as an independent object, enabling parallel transaction processing — combined with the Move language (inherited from the Diem legacy) and zkLogin (a zero-knowledge-based login using web2 credentials), this forms the platform'*s core technical pitch.