While the market is up, SUI is down; although this doesn’t mean it’s not worth paying attention to. Sui and Aptos both, which leverage the Move programming language, have had significant runups since the start of this recent bullish cycle. FTX notoriously sold their Sui stake amidst bankruptcy claims before the token’s run-up from a low of $0.40 to a high of $1.86…
In this edition, we’ll be discussing Bluefin, one of the top dApps on the network. Using Sui gives the chain some unique advantages, including access to UX tools like Sui’s ZKLogin, account abstraction, and more.
Stay alert in the markets ⬇
Background on Sui
The decision to start Sui was not solely driven by market conditions, as the protocol was introduced in the bear market of 2023, but rather by identifying gaps in the market and seeing opportunities for improvement. Both Co-Founders in Sam Blackshear and Evan Cheng have been part of Facebook's Libra team since 2018. Libra was an attempt by Facebook (before the namechange to Meta) to put out a private payment system, akin to a network for just using stablecoins. The project also originally went by the name ‘Diem’. It represented a major company dabbling in developing their own cryptocurrency before development ceased due to regulatory concerns.
Libra/ Diem ws intended to be something in between a crypto and a fintech payment solution. Users would convert their native currencies e.g. USD, EUR, etc. to Libra via a Libra wallet, dubbed Nova. It even had integrations with Facebook Messanger, and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook), which is a headstart. This may have been where the trouble arose, as lawmakers saw potential for a monopoly to form relating to online payments which could look concerning. Now Tron is a serious player for payments, albeit in emerging markets which don’t see the same type of volume as in developed countries.
Sui Co-Founder Sam Blackshear was responsible for creating the Move programming language, leading its design and implementation within the context of Libra. Because of this, the Move language can be thought of as a programming language designed specifically with smart contracts in mind. Now, chains like Sui and Aptos, and even others like Starcoin utilize Move.
Background on Bluefin
Now, back to Bluefin. Bluefin is a decentralized perps platform on Sui. The platform works on a non-custodial design with all balances and trades on-chain. Orders are constructed by specifying asset, quantity, and price, signed using a private key. Matching engine responsible for order matching on-chain without user trust. Market makers constantly adjust orders to enhance liquidity but face challenges in decentralized systems.
The team places an emphasis on efficient market-making to enhance liquidity and transaction throughput. There are considerations for maintaining order book functionality even if the matching engine goes down. The underlying architecture is built on a non-custodial premise with a focus on user experience and liquidity depth.
UX is definitely a primary focus for Bluefin; the platform features account abstraction, allowing users to sign in simply using a Google account. This means that external wallets are not required to trade.
Simplifying wallet components and enabling easy asset deposits are key priorities for the next two quarters. The team is targeting a user-friendly platform comparable to major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase by next quarter.
On this front, Bluefin is also embedding ZK login within the wallet for easier access. The future goal is to allow new users to start trading using Google login without prior knowledge of web3. Mysten Labs’ ZK Login feature aligns with Bluefin’s goals of simplifying UX for their own platform and the web3 experience in general.
Bluefin’s current focus is on perpetual futures, with plans to expand to other derivatives in the future. Initial markets include mostly majors: $BTC, ETH, $SOL, $SUI, $TIA, $SEI, $APT, $AVAX, $ARB, and $MATIC. The team is aiming to add at least 100 more markets by year-end. Even with the limited markets currently available, there are approximately 5,000 weekly active users with significant traction from Korea and broader Asian regions.
On the scalability side, the team is addressing technical debt (issues in code that result from prioritizing speed over sustainability) and rearchitecting systems for market makers’ needs and increased volumes. Redesigning architecture to support scalability, utilizing Move programming language for improved functionality. The team is building a scalable product over the next one to two years, focusing on handling anticipated growth effectively.
Insights from Bluefin Co-Founders & Bluefin Origins
Bluefin was co-founded by Rabeel and Ahmad Jawaid. The team endured a bear market period with quiet years, focusing on building resilience and higher-quality products. It was noted that the industry-wide setback associated with the collapse of FTX, specifically had negative implications for Non-EVM ecosystems. These ecosystems were more on the tailend of adoption, and naturally had less strong foundations than those of EVM and Ethereum mainnet.
The journey from inception to building a high-volume product involved facing challenges and making rash decisions initially. The team started in late 2020 during the bull run (before Sui was introduced) and faced pressure to launch quickly, leading to initial product quality issues. Bluefin initially was EVM-based, and later pivoted to Sui over time. Network challenges, like during the Arbitrum airdrop, caused trade reverting. Experienced teams anticipated issues and had mechanisms to queue transactions for later processing, improving user experience. Custom layer-2 options were explored for cost-effectiveness but raised concerns about security and composability.
The team considered migrating to Solana, Sui, and others for benchmarking throughput and speed metrics aligning with their vision. They engaged with the Mysten Labs team (the team behind Sui) which revealed strong conviction in their vision through detailed technical discussions, such as the introduction of Sui’s ZK Login.
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