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Dialogue with Mysten Labs CEO: How can SUI improve the existing problems of asset ownership on the chain?

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SUI is a new asset-centric blockchain platform that leverages a data model to parallelize transaction pipelines for scalability while addressing the myriad usability and programmability limitations that plague other blockchains

Original title: "asset ownership and why existing blockchains are *not* doing a good enough"

Original author: EvanWeb3, Mysten Labs CEO

Original compilation: SUI World DAO

Recently, Evan Cheng, co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs, was a guest on Digital Architecture Lab's video interview program. Evan has extensive experience in development, with more than 24 years of experience building developer-oriented technology and leading teams at companies such as Apple and Facebook. Prior to founding Mysten Labs, Evan led Meta's Novi Research in developing cutting-edge blockchain technology. A video of the interview is available here.

Evan talked about currently most blockchains focus on improving the The performance of blockchains, not the way assets are modeled, and SUI is a new asset-centric blockchain platform that leverages data models to parallelize transaction pipelines for scalability while addressing issues that have plagued other blockchains numerous usability and programmability limitations.

This article will briefly introduce Evan's views on the current blockchain in "asset ownership", and why the existing blockchain is not good enough ? Through a simple example, why on the EVM chain, you can't really control the assets you "own"? And how does the data model of SUI Network solve these usability and programmability problems?

Before we discuss the role of blockchain in asset ownership, let’s talk about what’s wrong with the web today: centralized platforms with distribution capabilities is extracting value from user-generated content. Let's take a look at some examples: For example, this tweet I posted had some influence, and even added more followers for me, increasing my influence on Twitter, but outside of this, it is not important for my The usefulness of the social graph is basically zero. On every other social network, users are required to import their contacts, and all the value related to this flows to the platform. This problem also exists in content platforms, game platforms...

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The essence of Web3 is a shift in the relationship between content creators, consumers and platforms. Because of economic alignment, it is more collaborative, and the platform provides convenience to users instead of controlling users' assets, for example, my social graph should be useful outside of Twitter. This is why blockchain is powerful, consumers own their assets. Smart contracts replace the functions of centralized platforms - custody, convenience, security.

Assets: From Centralized Platforms to Consumer Control

Trust: From Centralized platform => smart contract

The core functions of the blockchain: assets and ownership, programmability and transaction processing, the current block How is the chain network realized?

Taking the EVM chain as an example, asset ownership is tracked in a map within a smart contract. If Alice wants to transfer her tokens to Bob, she needs to ask the smart contract to update the ownership record. As follows:

During this process,you actually You have no control over the assets you "own", and even simple transfers are controlled through smart contracts. You can't lend it out, store it elsewhere, or do anything that isn't programmed in the contract, your asset is just locked and other contracts can't use your asset.

NFT is worse, ERC 721 etc. represent ownership of assets off-chain, which also breaks programmability - because all states of assets Both are off-chain, contracts have very little effect on assets, and composability is severely compromised.

So, now let's see how SUI can change this situation?

Maybe you have heard that SUI is asset-centric. This means that assets on SUI are type objects, and all objects have stable and globally unique IDs. “Any asset on SUI is an NFT”, and the input and output of all transactions are in object representation.

Consumers have control over the assets on Sui, every Each object can be transferred to another object without interacting with the smart contract, and you can even interact with different smart contracts running on your asset, as long as the contract understands the object type.

Developers can create any type of object, other developers New contract asset data of comprehension types can be written and stored on the chain, and the properties of assets on the chain can be changed.

Objects are composable assets, objects can own other objects , developers can alter, combine and create hierarchies.

Asset composability is critical for scalability to It is very important, think of the "cup" as an asset of the game that supports UGC, and the smart contract allows water, wine, and juice to be "combined" with the cup. If someone wants to introduce "liquid gold" into this "cup", it cannot be realized in the smart contract, but it can be realized on the SUI Network. The data models of existing blockchains model asset ownership poorly, they are restrictive, and stateful (e.g. games, social) applications are difficult to use them. Sui's object-centric data model addresses these usability and programmability issues.

Sui's object model also enables horizontal scalability by exploiting explicit dependency information. The transactions on the SUI chain can be grouped according to their target objects. Each group is independently processed by a separate worker. The verifier can expand the capacity horizontally by adding workers, and the verifier can enable more workers to meet the requirements. peak demand.