Sui's original protocol builders designed the network to scale. Unlike other blockchains, which use scarcity and transaction cost to rein in network activity, Sui scales horizontally while maintaining affordable gas fees.

Sui Mainnet's first 90 days proved this design concept, recording a peak 5,414 transactions per second while maintaining 100 percent uptime.

During this period, Ethos' Sui 8192 game and the Bullshark quest run by Mysten Labs brought a spike in network activity. Sui handled this load faultlessly, processing transactions quickly for users and demonstrating its support for highly parallel and concurrent transaction execution.

By the numbers

Sui officially launched its Mainnet on May 3, 2023, putting it at just a little over 90 days old as of this writing. Sui Explorer shows how transaction volume increased dramatically over the month of July, hitting a peak of 5,414 transactions per second on July 27. According to the Artemis data platform, Sui processed over 65.8 million transaction blocks in a single 24 hour period, the highest single day transaction volume for any blockchain. (Note that Artemis typically counts transactions, but used transaction blocks for Sui to more accurately represent user activity. Mysten Labs' internal data shows 71 million transaction blocks based on a different 24 hour slice of time.)

Suiscan records 965.87 million transactions in total, putting Sui on a path to hit a billion transactions very soon. Sui Explorer shows 737.22 million Programmable Transaction Blocks in total, with each containing up to 1,024 individual actions.

As designed, average gas fees remained relatively flat during this transaction increase, indicating Sui should be able to handle much greater traffic through its horizontal scalability. This success puts to rest the notion that blockchains require too many resources to handle use cases with billions of users. Sui offers builders the same financial guarantees as Web2 solutions: no matter the amount of traffic and users, Sui's fees remain low, stable, and predictable.

Sui Explorer also shows 2.7 million active accounts, meaning accounts that showed at least one transaction after Mainnet launch. Daily active accounts hit a peak of 550,028 on July 30, according to Suiscan, volume largely related to the Sui 8192 game and Bullshark quest.

Suiscan shows a total of 8.01 million NFTs on the network. Ethos reports that 1.75 million of those NFTs are due to Sui 8192, because starting a new game instantly mints a new object. Ethos recorded over 660 million moves made in the game, and over 9 billion RPC calls. Whether on Sui or any other network, a single viral app can generate immense traffic. Sui demonstrated it can meet the demand instead of degrading the user experience or raising gas prices.

The builder community

Many builders joined Sui long before Mainnet launch, while others are just now seeing its promise. A highly performant network provides the environment, but the content and utility for users comes from the apps launched by builders. These early metrics are due to the builders as much as they are to the network operators and Sui's design.

Sui's builder community has come together at Builder Houses throughout the year, at locations as diverse as Denver, Vietnam, and Paris. The inspiration derived during these events from presentations and networking has led to an impressive growth and innovation in apps.

Likewise, a continuing program of hackathons incentivized builders to innovate and explore Sui's capabilities. A variety of Sui grants help builders maintain their velocity, while Sui's online community answers technical questions and provides encouragement.

Cruising altitude

Designing and building a new, high-performance blockchain to Mainnet is an engineering feat and a humbling journey. As a decentralized infrastructure, a community of operators across validators and node providers must cooperate to maintain the blockchain's operational health. Sui's current success is as much a feat of the operator community as of the Sui design itself.

Sui underwent its first real-world heavy load test with flying colors and extraordinary numbers. More impressively, its design shows expected resilience, with the ability to continually process increasing transaction volumes.

We look forward to seeing Sui put to greater and more intense tests as new apps launch, giving users everything from exciting games to must-use apps.