Web3 infrastructure startup Mysten Labs unveils its Layer 1 blockchain

Mysten Labs, a web3 infrastructure startup founded by four former Meta engineers, has unveiled its inaugural product: a Layer 1 blockchain called Sui.

Sui is a permissionless proof-of-stake blockchain network being developed by Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, and George Danezis — who all worked at Novi (the crypto unit of Meta) before founding Mysten Labs. At Novi, they helped develop the Diem blockchain and the Move programming language.

Sui is now an advanced version of Diem, being designed from the ground up by the quartet. Mysten says Sui will have theoretically no limit on throughput or transactions per second. It will also support smart contracts development via the Move programming language, meaning developers can build decentralized applications on Sui.

“Development on Sui is fast and on point,” said Lucky Kat Studios, creators of the Panzerdogs game, in a statement. “Not only is its transaction speed impressive, but its ability to mirror NFTs and its dynamic handling of on-chain assets can bring new value to users and the assets that they own.”

Mysten Labs today launched the public software development kit of Sui and is showing off demos to developers, Cheng told The Block. The blockchain’s testnet is expected in the next few months and its mainnet later this year along with a native token.

Mysten is backed by high-profile investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures, and the startup raised $36 million in December. It aims to bring more developers to Sui and billions of users to crypto, as The Block reported recently.