Who created Sui, and when did mainnet launch?
October 26, 2026
Sui was created by Mysten Labs, a company founded in 2021 by Evan Cheng (CEO), Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, Kostas Chalkias and Adeniyi Abiodun. Before Mysten, they worked at Meta (then Facebook) on the Diem blockchain and the Move language. Sui mainnet launched on May 3, 2023, opening the network to public use. The Sui Foundation, a separate organization, funds and supports the ecosystem.
The team and the Diem connection
The founders were part of Novi, Meta's research and engineering group behind the Diem payment network. Diem introduced Move, a smart contract language built so that assets can't be copied or dropped by accident. Sam Blackshear, now Mysten's CTO, created Move as part of that effort. After Diem was wound down, the group started Mysten Labs and built Sui around a reworked version of Move. In Sui Move, global storage is replaced by objects with unique IDs. See what is Sui Move and Sui Move vs Aptos Move. Aptos, another Diem spin-off, kept a model closer to the original Move.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Mysten Labs founded |
| December 2022 | Sui Foundation publishes the SUI token allocation |
| May 3, 2023 | Mainnet launches with Narwhal/Bullshark consensus |
| August 2024 | Mysticeti consensus replaces Narwhal/Bullshark on mainnet |
You can check how far mainnet has come since genesis by querying the current epoch. Each epoch lasts about 24 hours:
curl -s https://graphql.mainnet.sui.io/graphql \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"query":"{ epoch { epochId startTimestamp } }"}'As of epoch 1291 (started 2026-10-25), mainnet has been running for about three and a half years.
Mysten Labs vs Sui Foundation
- Mysten Labs writes most of the core software: the
suinode and CLI, the Move framework, the TypeScript SDK (@mysten/sui) and the Slush wallet. Its code is public at github.com/MystenLabs. - The Sui Foundation manages the Community Reserve of SUI tokens (grants, the delegation program, validator subsidies) and runs ecosystem programs.
Neither organization runs the network on its own. Mainnet is operated by an independent set of validators elected by stake each epoch. See how many Sui validators.
Sources
- Adeniyi Abiodun on the Sui blockchain's origins, Sui blog (co-founder list)
- Sui 2023 growth milestones, Sui blog (mainnet launch on May 3, 2023)
- SUI token allocation, Sui blog
- Sam Blackshear on the origins of Move, Sui blog
- Mysticeti consensus reduces latency, Sui blog