As a primitive on Sui, Kiosks natively let people set up shops to display and sell NFTs and other digital assets. Kiosks serve the creative community by letting sellers set automatically enforced royalties that extend to third-party transfers of their work.

Although systems supporting commerce are common on the traditional Web, the technology itself wasn't specifically designed for this usage. Sui's commerce support, which includes trusted transactions and data privacy, is built in as a fundamental feature of the network.

Smart contracts written in Move and Sui's inherent security serve as fundamental pillars supporting commerce. The Kiosk primitive takes commerce a step further, supporting features such as auctions, custom transaction policies including royalties, and secure ownership transference.

Shops for all

With the Kiosk primitive, everyone from individuals to large markets have all the tools they need, built natively into Sui, to set up shop. Builders don't need to develop additional layers or employ third party services, as they do on the traditional Web and some other blockchains.

In Sui programming terms, a Kiosk is a shared object on the network that stores digital assets. The Kiosk creator administers it through KioskOwnerCap, a single-owner object. Digital assets stored by a Kiosk, which are technically objects owned by the Kiosk object, can be sold, auctioned, or given away.

Because Kiosk is a primitive on Sui, setting one up requires relatively simple code, as shown below.

import { createKioskAndShare } from '@myshop/kiosk';

let tx = new TransactionBuilder();
let kioskOwnerCap = createKioskAndShare(tx);

tx.transferObjects([ kioskOwnerCap ], tx.pure(sender, 'address'));

The process for putting assets up for sale in the Kiosk first requires transferring them to the Kiosk using the sui::kiosk::place function, then listing them using the kiosk::list function. These functions are all built into Sui. Potential buyers can browse listed objects and purchase them.

Beyond simply transferring ownership of digital assets, however, Kiosk lets creators set policies about the asset type. A common use case involves setting royalties on original artwork, usually an NFT. Royalties mean the creator can retain an economic interest in the NFT even as it is transferred from one party to another. For example, the creator could set a three percent royalty, earning them three percent of the amount of any subsequent sales. Royalties ensure that artists whose work becomes very popular in subsequent trades continue to profit from their work, and are incentivized to create more.

E-Commerce revolution

Total e-commerce sales hit $5.7 trillion last year, but building this market required a huge investment in engineering resources going back to the Amazon and eBay launches in 1995. Services such as Shopify and Square continued big build-outs to extend e-commerce to more players.

Sui, however, thoughtfully builds in e-commerce capabilities as a fundamental feature. Sui gives individuals and companies the tools to set up all manner of markets with only a fraction of the investment made by e-commerce titans on the traditional Web.

Sui's Kiosk supports many use cases, from the aforementioned NFT markets to digital music services, where recording artists can set and earn their own royalties. Photographers and movie makers can look to Sui as an entirely new distribution model. Digital assets can also represent real property, such as a car title or property deed. Sui's features give it the potential to revolutionize e-commerce.