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Glossary

Find terms used in Sui defined below.

Archival Service​

A gRPC API layer that exposes access to this store, enabling point lookups of historical data, ex., LedgerService

Archival Store​

A long-term storage system that holds checkpoint-indexed Sui data, i.e., Bigtable.

Causal history​

Causal history is the relationship between an object in Sui and its direct predecessors and successors. This history is essential to the causal order Sui uses to process transactions. In contrast, other blockchains read the entire state of their world for each transaction, introducing latency.

Causal order​

Causal order is a representation of the relationship between transactions and the objects they produce, laid out as dependencies. Validators cannot execute a transaction dependent on objects created by a prior transaction that has not finished. Rather than total order, Sui uses causal order (a partial order).

Certificate​

A certificate is the mechanism proving a transaction was approved or certified. Validators vote on transactions, and aggregators collect a Byzantine-resistant majority of these votes into a certificate and broadcast it to all Sui validators, thereby ensuring finality.

Closed-Loop Token​

A token that can be used only for a specific service, by an authorized account, or a token that certain accounts can be blocked from using.

DeepBook​

A decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) built on Sui. The Sui documentation refers to the DeepBook standard as "DeepBookV3" to avoid confusion with the recently deprecated version of DeepBook (DeepBookV2).

Devnet​

A development network where data is wiped regularly as part of scheduled software updates.

Epoch​

Operation of the Sui network is temporally partitioned into non-overlapping, fixed-duration epochs. During a particular epoch, the set of validators participating in the network is fixed.

Equivocation​

Equivocation in blockchains is the malicious action of dishonest actors giving conflicting information for the same message, such as inconsistent or duplicate voting.

Eventual consistency​

Eventual consistency is the consensus model employed by Sui; if one honest validator certifies the transaction, all of the other honest validators will too eventually.

Finality​

Finality is the assurance a transaction will not be revoked. This stage is considered closure for an exchange or other blockchain transaction.

Gas​

Gas refers to the computational effort required for executing operations on the Sui network. In Sui, gas is paid with the network's native currency SUI. The cost of executing a transaction in SUI units is referred to as the transaction fee.

Genesis​

Genesis is the initial act of creating accounts and gas objects for a Sui network. Sui provides a genesis command that allows users to create and inspect the genesis object setting up the network for operation.

Localnet​

A locally created development network running on your local machine.

Kiosk​

A decentralized system for commerce applications on Sui. The Sui Kiosk standard consists of Kiosk objects: shared objects owned by individual parties that store assets that can be sold or traded.

Mainnet​

The Sui production network.

Multi-writer objects​

Multi-writer objects are objects that are owned by more than one address. Transactions affecting multi-writer objects require consensus in Sui. This contrasts with transactions affecting only single-writer objects, which require only a confirmation of the owner's address contents.

Mysticeti​

The consensus protocol used on Sui. Mysticeti is a high-throughput, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based Byzantine consensus protocol.

Object​

The basic unit of storage in Sui is an object. In contrast to many other blockchains, where storage is centered around an address and each address contains a key-value store, Sui's storage is centered around objects. Sui objects have one of the following primary states:

  • Immutable: The object cannot be modified.
  • Mutable: The object can be modified.

Further, mutable objects are divided into these categories:

  • Owned: The object can be modified only by its owner.
  • Shared: The object can be modified by anyone.

Immutable objects do not need this distinction because they have no owner.

Operation Cap​

Allows a validator to authorize another account to perform certain actions on its behalf.

Proof-of-stake​

Proof-of-stake is a blockchain consensus mechanism where the voting weight of each validator is proportional to a bonded amount of the network's native currency (called their stake in the network). This mitigates Sybil attacks by forcing bad actors to gain a large stake in the blockchain first.

Single-writer objects​

Single-writer objects are owned by one address. In Sui, transactions affecting only single-writer objects owned by the same address may proceed with only a verification of the sender's address, greatly speeding transaction times. These are simple transactions. See Single-Writer Apps for example applications of this simple transaction model.

Smart contract​

A smart contract is an agreement based upon the protocol for conducting transactions in a blockchain. In Sui, smart contracts are written in the Move programming language.

Sui​

Sui refers to the Sui blockchain, and the Sui open source project as a whole.

SUI​

SUI is the native token to the Sui network.

Sui Keystore​

A secure storage system for managing your Sui cryptographic key pairs.

Sui Keytool​

A CLI tool that provides commands for managing and generating addresses, and interacting with private keys, signatures, or zkLogin.

A Mysten Labs product that connects wallets across chains to support use cases such as cross chain wallet verification, asset ownership verification, and asset distributions across chains.

Sui Object Display​

A template engine that enables on-chain management of off-chain representation (display) for a type.

Soulbound​

An asset that is bound to an account and cannot be transferred.

Testnet​

A development network. Data deployed to Testnet persists through the regular update process, but might be wiped when necessary. Testnet data wipes are announced ahead of time.

Total order​

Total order refers to the ordered presentation of the history of all transactions processed by a traditional blockchain up to a given time. This is maintained by many blockchain systems, as the only way to process transactions. In contrast, Sui uses a causal (partial) order wherever possible and safe.

Transaction​

A transaction in Sui is a change to the blockchain. This may be a simple transaction affecting only single-writer, single-address objects, such as minting an NFT or transferring an NFT or another token. These transactions may bypass the consensus protocol in Sui.

More complex transactions affecting objects that are shared or owned by multiple addresses, such as asset management and other DeFi use cases, do go through consensus.

Transfer​

A transfer is switching the owner address of a token to a new one via command in Sui. This is accomplished via the Sui CLI client command line interface. It is one of the more common of many commands available in the CLI client.

Validator​

A validator in Sui plays a passive role analogous to the more active role of validators and miners in other blockchains. In Sui, validators do not continuously participate in the consensus protocol but are called into action only when receiving a transaction or certificate.

Wallet Standard​

A cross-chain standard that defines how apps can automatically discover and interact with wallets.