Author: @EmanAbio; Plain Language Blockchain
The encryption market performed strongly in September, with leading BTC pump rising by more than 10%. At the same time, Sui, known as the “next Solana”, rose by 132.2% in market capitalization, ranking 13th and becoming the recent focus of attention.
With the halo of the former star project Libra, SUI’s five co-founders are all big shots in different fields of Facebook, and the team seems to be stronger than Aptos, which is also the inheritor of Libra. Recently, Adeniyi Abiodun, one of SUI’s co-founders, gave a detailed sharing about the team story and the birth process of SUI.
The following is the main text:
Imagine this: your wife is in labor, about to give birth to your first child, and you are risking all your savings to invest in a startup project. Would you do it? I did, and that decision changed everything for me. It was a turning point in my life, ultimately bringing me together with some of the industry’s most talented individuals to establish Mysten Labs and build Sui. Let me first tell you my story and then the story of Sui.
01 Preface
In 2012, I worked in the financial industry. Life and work were very regular at that time, I can tell you every detail from waking up in the morning to leaving work. I know what I have to do, which bus to take, who to meet, who will be sitting in front of me, what I will write, how to do testing, how to check the code, and even before going home, what the trader will say about the new improvements I made. Everything was too predictable.
To me, the certainty in life actually makes me feel bored. I crave some uncertainty, to challenge myself, or at least to make me feel like there is more room for development. It is at this time that I discovered Bitcoin (BTC).
The first time I read the BTC White Paper (shown above) was from a colleague, and at first I thought it was a bit of eyewash, and there was nothing worth seeing. Until later, I looked at the code and read the paper again, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible, it’s amazing!’ The concept of decentralized assets deeply touched me. It’s not just about mining, it’s a bigger vision. BTC showed me that stable assets can exist outside of the TradFi system.![]()
So I started buying Bitcoin and doing Mining myself. I set up my own Mining Farm at home. As time went on, I realized there was demand in the market and started providing Mining services for others, and people started paying for it. Until one day, my wife asked me to move the machines out of the house because there was no more empty room. The house was full of constantly running Mining Rigs. So I started renting space in a data center and ended up establishing my own mining company. Of course, all of this happened naturally.
But in the end, I made the decision to go all out.
Imagine this, you’re in the hospital, and your wife is giving birth, and you have to admit that you just spent all your savings on a Bitcoin Mining Rig. That was my reality, and that moment could have had different outcomes. I felt nervous and anxious at the time, but I was also filled with hope. I knew it was risky, but I believed that Cryptocurrency could change our lives. Of course, my wife was very angry, but I assured her that it was an investment in our future. I understand that making well-thought-out risk decisions and pursuing our dreams are crucial, even if it means facing uncertainty and possible failure.
So, I used the money to buy a Mining Rig, placed them in a data center, and people paid to rent my machine time. The bitcoins they mined belonged to them, and I charged a certain fee. Most of my orders came from the United States, and the largest supplier was also in Texas. So considering my expenses at the supplier and the money earned from the United States, it made sense to expand my business to the United States.
So I boarded a plane to the United States. Originally, it was just a temporary relocation for six months, aimed at collaborating with suppliers and waiting for Mining Rigs to be put into production, but it eventually turned into a long-term settlement. Of course, this is not the first time I have suddenly moved to a new place and adapted to a new environment and new friends.
02 Nigerian Kid with Aberdeen Accent
Let’s go back to the beginning of it all.
I was born in Nigeria and lived there until I was eight. My dad was studying for a PhD in Economics at that time, so our whole family moved to Aberdeen in the east of Scotland, where he pursued his doctorate (my brother would later follow the same path). As a result, I have a strong Aberdonian accent - it’s quite strange, you know, a child from Nigeria speaking with a Scottish accent, it really is strange.
After my father completed his doctoral degree, we moved again, this time to England. He started working, but soon made a bold decision—resigning to become a full-time pastor, dedicated to serving God. This made me realize: anything is possible, and you don’t have to be limited to past choices.
As for my mother, she is a born entrepreneur, always investing in business and real estate. Honestly, she may be the most formidable negotiator I have ever seen. When she goes to the market, she can negotiate to an embarrassing extent and always get what she wants. She never easily accepts rejection… perhaps I have inherited some from her, but definitely not as formidable as her.
This road is not always smooth sailing-moving, adapting to a new environment, and seeing parents bravely take steps. But looking back on the past, I don’t want to change anything. My parents gave me great inspiration in all of this: how boring life is predictable.
As you can see, as a child, I kept moving and ended up studying at Queen Mary University. But to be honest, I had no interest in learning at all, I just wanted to play games and have fun. It wasn’t until it was time for an exam that I realized that books were less important when they were used.![]()
I noticed that my previous friends had no future. Some ended up in prison, others got involved in various dark things. I think this is not the life I want, especially since my parents are Africans. If I continue like this, I’m done.
So, I decided to make a change, study hard, and finally managed to barely get into Queen Mary University. After entering the school, I participated in a one-year introductory course and pondered about the future direction. I am very interested in astrophysics, but gradually realized that I need to do something more practical. Theory is good, but I prefer something practical that I can operate.
So I gave up astrophysics and turned to electronic engineering and computer science. Here, my passion for computers, programming, and software development really rose.
After graduation, I developed software and hardware for a start-up company, remotely monitoring the production of oil and natural gas. Later, I switched to finance, starting to build trading systems and Risk Management systems. It was interesting to build these systems while working at J.P. Morgan and HSBC, but gradually became boring.
As I said, all of this is too predictable. I can tell you what to do every step from waking up in the morning to leaving. And I can’t see where my long-term value lies and where I can make a significant impact. I don’t want 1% progress, I want 100 times change, I want achievements that can be talked about repeatedly and taken pride in.
Therefore, moving to the United States because of BTCMining company is a blessing for me, because I realize that the technology created by BTC is not just peer-to-peer cash, it can change the way our world operates. I began to see a bigger picture.
03 Find Clear Direction Through Weariness
After spending some time in the BTCMining field, I feel a little disappointed because it seems that we haven’t made much progress in BTC. Mining is just one aspect, what else can we do?
Because I have a background in the corporate world, especially working for major banks, I began to feel that blockchain technology might be the key to solving enterprise problems. So, I decided to introduce blockchain technology into the enterprise. These experiences allowed me to work at Oracle and VMware. VMware is a software company focused on cloud computing. Joining VMware was a new challenge for me. They are developing an enterprise solution based on blockchain, but progress is slow, with almost no other products, only Algorithm left.
We need to establish new products, launch them into the market, sell to businesses and customers, and strive to catch up with companies that were established earlier than us, such as IBM and Oracle. This puts a lot of pressure on me.
I know that the encryption industry changes quickly, and I must quickly launch products because I understand the feeling of failure. I don’t want to fail because I didn’t give it my all at the beginning. I can’t accept that the reason for failure is because I didn’t work hard enough.
04 The Lesson of Competitiveness and Fatigue
What’s even worse is that I’ve always been a very competitive person. Whether it’s playing football, basketball, or video games, I always want to win. To me, true victory is a big win. I don’t want to beat you 1-0 in FIFA, I have to win with a score of 6-0, and the margin of victory has to be obvious, isn’t that cool?
Therefore, I have taken on a lot of responsibilities in a short period of time because there is simply too much work. I find myself doing marketing, engineering, product development, and various other things, as well as frequent business trips and meetings. It’s really a lot for one person, but I am very motivated.
I always tell myself and the team, “We must do our best, because we are still behind and need to launch this product as soon as possible.” I work 20 hours a day, seven days a week. On the way to the office and back home, I am busy working and collaborating with people in different time zones. I feel unstoppable.
But soon I realized that the real problem was not the technology, which we could handle, but the issue of ownership. Each company wants to control its own infrastructure, which makes it difficult to establish good cooperation. Each company wants a piece of the cake, and no one is willing to work together for a common goal. So, for the first time, I experienced a period of fatigue, feeling like I was hit by a truck. I completely exhausted myself within six months.
This experience taught me that we cannot regard failure as a short-term thing. We need to follow long-term goals, which is the philosophy we’ve been adhering to at SUI team. We are not only pursuing quick victories, but building a truly Decentralization internet.
This is not just a 1% improvement, but a 100-fold increase. I hope this is something I can repeatedly talk about and be proud of. But this also requires a team that pursues 100 times the results, and all this starts with Facebook’s Libra project.
05 Meeting with the 100x Team
After experiencing professional burnout at VMware, I came to Facebook.
At Facebook, I started to participate in a project called Libra, which is very ambitious. Facebook has formed an alliance with the aim of building a global Digital Money and payment system. The reason that attracted me to join Facebook is that they can achieve team collaboration that we couldn’t achieve in our previous work: at Facebook, everyone can work together towards a common goal.
Although I still see the “startup issues” at Oracle and VMware, I feel that Facebook has addressed this problem through the alliance of Libra and Diem, and they are committed to building this infrastructure for the world.
Our goal is to make transferring money online as easy as sending an email. We believe this is a public service that can truly help the world. To be honest, after going through what happened before, working at Facebook feels much easier, and the environment is completely different.![]()
Facebook has assembled one of the best research teams I have ever seen. The team includes professors from Stanford, outstanding computer scientists, and smart people from all over the world.
I had a great experience working with David Marcus and Kevin Weil. Everyone was passionate about achieving our goals, and the team atmosphere was excellent.
However, even with so many outstanding talents, we still face great challenges. The biggest problem is that due to Facebook’s past issues with public trust and data privacy, many people have doubts about their launch of a new financial system.
Just imagine, if you woke up tomorrow and found that 2 billion people all had an “Facebook bank” account, it would be the largest bank in the world. That would be terrifying for any country.
The public generally believes: “I don’t trust Facebook because it is a monopoly.” This is the problem we want to solve: how to build trust on the basis of distrust? As a result, Libra did not succeed. In retrospect, we may have underestimated the pressure from Congress on Facebook. However, I sincerely think that Zuck and David Marcus should be appreciated because they dared to try what others didn’t dare to do.
Ultimately, Facebook’s failure actually gave opportunities to other companies such as PayPal, Visa, Circle, etc. Their investments in Libra and the subsequent cancellation of the project actually opened the door for others, and I think they should be praised for this.
It really saddens me to see this excellent team fail due to external factors. It was the best team I’ve ever worked with, and I have no idea what I should do next.
06 Outstanding Teams Without a Plan
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The five co-founders of SUI
I also want to say that the failure of Libra contains the seeds of success for me personally. If it wasn’t for that failure, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with those outstanding talents who eventually came together to create Mysten Labs and subsequently launched SUI. Looking back on my time at Facebook, one thing that impressed me was Evan and his team, who were truly amazing. Evan is an outstanding leader and a great visionary.
Evan![]()
Evan is one of the primary innovators of LLVM, a technology that powers most iPhones and countless other devices we use every day. It’s a major game-changer in the tech industry, and his work has earned him the prestigious ACM Computer Science Award, which has also been awarded to many top computer scientists.
He leads the research and development team at Facebook, and the team members are like mad scientists, creating all sorts of things we use in our daily lives. So when I had the opportunity to collaborate with Evan and his team, I immediately seized it, and this experience also allowed me to build friendships with future co-founders of Mysten Labs.
Due to the seemingly endless latency of Libra/Diem’s release, Evan and I gathered together. He asked, ‘If we were to start a company, who would you want to work with?’ He posed the same question to other founding team members. Everyone’s answers were unanimous, and this was clearly the destined outcome. Sam Blackshear is one of Facebook’s top engineers, and Move programming language is his creation. This guy is a genius.
Left: Sam Blackshear; Center: Evan; Right: Adeniyi Abiodun![]()
Next up is Consensus expert George Danezis.
Facebook actually acquired his company Chainspace to help build Libra, which is enough to prove his ability.![]()
Finally, there’s Kostas ‘Kryptos’ Chalkias, and what he came up with is truly astonishing.
At Facebook, he is the top choice for all matters related to encryption, and many password algorithms used in WhatsApp are developed by him. This application is one of the most widely used applications globally.![]()
We had a conference call together, and everyone mentioned the same name. So we decided, ‘Let’s just do it this way!’ There was no debate about roles and responsibilities. To be honest, we didn’t even know exactly what we were going to build, but one thing was clear: we wanted to collaborate together. And that’s how Mysten Labs was born, and it’s off to a great start.
07 Global Coordinating Layer for Smart Assets
The vision of Libra is to make remittances as simple as sending emails, relying on an alliance of multiple companies to control the infrastructure. When we founded Mysten Labs, we realized that this vision was too narrow. We wanted to build something bigger, open, and decentralized.
We do not pursue quick success either. As I said before, this is not a 1% improvement, but a 100-fold improvement, which needs to be something that I can talk about and be proud of repeatedly.
The world is undergoing comprehensive digitization, and every kind of asset is defaulting to digital form. Today, the Internet excels in data transmission, but falls short when it comes to transferring value or intent. When I want to transfer money to you, we face a mess of protocols, none of which can truly control the funds.
So, what kind of infrastructure does the Internet need to create a world where assets can be seamlessly built, coordinated, and combined?
If we want to have tens of billions of assets, and everyone has their own assets, how can we coordinate the intentions of these assets in a unified way, so that others can also participate?
We understand, this is our mission.
So, in the ashes of Libra, the vision of SUI gradually emerges - a global coordination layer for digital assets. This is an ambitious goal.
But the key is: we know we have the ability to meet this challenge.![]()
We are not just a group of tech guys playing with encryption technology. There are many people in the team who have been involved in building systems and applications that can scale to billions of users. We have the necessary technical and practical experience to build a product that can truly operate globally.
For me, it all fits perfectly: a grand vision, a team I fully trust, and the opportunity to have a profound impact on the future of the Internet.
I believe we have enough talent to achieve this goal.
With the advancement of construction, the strength of our team is becoming more apparent. From the fastest Consensus protocol to object-oriented approaches, and to the best developer experience in the industry, SUI is gradually taking shape.
We also understand that a complete vision is not just a global coordination layer. We need a storage layer and network infrastructure. We are working with Walrus to build a global storage layer. Next, we will establish a global Network Layer, and we are gradually building the entire technical system.![]()
I can confidently say that no other L1 blockchain can compare to the vision or technology we pursue at Mysten Labs. And no other company has the talent that our team possesses. That’s why I believe we can come out on top. As I mentioned before, I hate failure. I am not good at accepting failure, and that’s why I firmly believe we will win this competition.
You might ask, why am I spending so much time telling my own story instead of diving directly into the exciting content of Mysten Labs. I think it’s important for you to understand my background so that you can see a more comprehensive picture. On the surface, it seems smooth sailing, but it’s not. Just like the world of encryption, my journey is full of twists and turns—unstable, uncertain, sometimes even risky, and may even seem a bit reckless. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for your patience. If you’re more interested in Sui’s vision, stay tuned for the next article, where we’ll delve deeper.
