Reflecting on the Journey to Sui Mainnet

To say we're excited would be an understatement – after a year and a half, Sui is has become a reality! I’m ecstatic that we can finally showcase our contributions to Sui and tell the Mysten Labs story of helping lay the foundation for the next phase of web3.

Of course, that excitement comes with some anxiety: we're trying to help Sui deliver the best possible experience in line with our mission of enabling a more collaborative internet. We're also keeping an eye on the broader macro environment amid regulatory concerns, but we're doing our best to stay focused on what we can control.

We can't wait to see how Sui Mainnet is received by the community and the world, and we're excited to be a part of this transformative moment. As it launches, I’d like to use this opportunity to reflect on Mysten’s journey and share some insights about what we learned over the last few months:

Collaboration, Trust, and Staying True to Convictions within Mysten

The Mysten Labs team is made up of talented and driven individuals who prioritize collaboration and trust in their work. Despite the controlled chaos that can sometimes arise from our ability to make decisions and push forward quickly, the team always makes it work. In fact, we helped coin the popular term "Suinami" to represent our belief in the opportunities ahead and our trust in each other to rise to the occasion.

Collaboration is the cornerstone of our success, and we understand the importance of working together even when moving quickly. We've set some ambitious goals in building fundamental web3 infrastructure, but we remain persistent.

Our biggest learning was the importance of staying true to our convictions and staying focused on the mission. As we engage with potential partners, we've discovered that our beliefs are often correct. This puts us in a prime position to guide the industry toward delivering values to consumers beyond the early adopters. The trust in ourselves and our beliefs has served us well in our mission to fundamentally change web3 to benefit users. We aim to build infrastructure that enables safe and low-cost digital asset ownership while extending a thread of trust to users through ethical behavior and choices that put users first.

Outlook, vision, and impact

As Mysten Labs looks ahead after this major milestone, we’re going to keep building on our incredible momentum. We’re building the foundational structure of the internet while championing collaboration, which is fundamental to web3. Our goal is to enable collaboration between producers, consumers, and distributors so that they can reap the benefits: more control over their assets, more transparency around pricing, and more fulfilling connections with communities. And we’re just getting started!

Striving for Decentralization

Contributing to Sui Mainnet has allowed us to revisit some fundamental and existential aspects of the crypto industry. What is the purpose of web3? What is the purpose of blockchain? What is the purpose of crypto?

I think it all comes down to intermediation. It means removing the control from a few giant companies with undue influence on how everyone around the world uses the internet. Centralization is not just a financial concern; it has to do with how people do commerce, how organizations engage customers, how people build communities around their creations…and most importantly, how consumers can benefit by having this direct relationship with creators.

The internet we have is not the internet we want or deserve. We’re seeing the harmful effects of centralization across industries. The internet is inefficient due to the presence of middlemen who control the distribution of assets and monetize them with little transparency.  Sure, these organizations say they're distributing earnings to the creator, but unless the creator has a large presence, they probably have very little control over how much money they make. We envision a closer, more equally beneficial relationship between creators and their audience, where users can interact with web3 without having to go through these intermediaries that monetize data.

We believe that the undue influence of large monopolies has to fundamentally change. We strive for a simple decentralized internet that exists to benefit all consumers. We envision a closer, more equally beneficial relationship between creators and their audience, where users can interact with web3 without having to go through these intermediaries that monetize data.

We believe that in ten years’ time, leading technology and financial institutions will either disrupt themselves by rebuilding around decentralized infrastructure or be replaced by fully decentralized alternatives. Web3 will enable individuals and creators to have unprecedented ownership over their own data and content, and we strive to give more direct control to creators by letting them interact safely and securely with consumers and not have to pay platform fees or commissions. But the tools to get there don't exist…yet.

Empowering Developers and Continuing to Build

With Mainnet, we’ve contributed to the first developer platform that gives builders the tools to create products that have direct relationships with consumers. This philosophy has some transformative impacts. For instance, in gaming, Sui enables games to add properties to items and modify them over time so that the items evolve with the player—promoting loyalty and community-building; in e-commerce, companies can generate enthusiasm and bring fans together in a closer, more organic fashion; in FinTech, the removal of an intermediary can create more efficient capital markets—ultimately benefiting consumers.

The applications are inspiring: more efficient capital markets, flexible and better products for consumers, protection of IP, and a focus on community-building. We fundamentally believe in this unique model where we can provide the rules defined by creators, e.g. royalty or IP protection, around assets that cannot be circumvented. Other blockchains require users to adapt to a standard or interface, but it’s hard to align incentives across multiple entities.  We believe that our model benefits everyone—creators, consumers, and businesses. We’re inspired by the opportunity.

Mysten Labs is committed to empowering developers to experiment and build products that stand out and have real benefits. We look forward to seeing decentralization become more accessible to users. We strive to help users understand the value and benefits of decentralization by providing tangible, holistic improvements to the web3 experience.