SUI Token Functions
Gas Payment
Pay for transaction fees and storage costs
Staking
Stake to validators to participate in consensus
Governance
Participate in on-chain governance decisions
Medium of Exchange
Use as currency in the Sui ecosystem
Token Denomination
SUI uses MIST as its smallest unit:All on-chain amounts are denominated in MIST. The human-readable SUI amount is MIST / 1,000,000,000.
SUI as a Coin
SUI is implemented as a native coin type:Coin<SUI> object:
Total Supply
SUI has a fixed maximum supply of 10 billion tokens:Distribution
The tokens are distributed across different allocations:- Community Reserve
- Early Contributors
- Investors
- Mysten Labs Treasury
- Community Access Program
Allocated for community programs, grants, and ecosystem development.
Token Release Schedule
SUI tokens are released over time through:1
Staking Rewards
New tokens minted as staking rewards each epoch
2
Vesting Schedules
Locked tokens released according to vesting timelines
3
Storage Fund Returns
SUI returned when objects are deleted
Using SUI in Transactions
Splitting Coins
Merging Coins
Getting Balance
Gas Coin Selection
Sui automatically selects gas coins for transactions:SUI in Smart Contracts
Receiving SUI Payments
Splitting SUI
Minting (Not Possible)
Economic Properties
Deflationary Mechanisms
- Storage Fees: Part of storage fees goes to non-refundable fund
- Burned Fees: Certain operations may burn SUI
- Lost Keys: Inaccessible wallets effectively reduce circulating supply
Inflationary Mechanisms
- Staking Rewards: New SUI issued to validators and stakers
- Subsidies: Temporary subsidies for network bootstrapping
Token Utility
As Gas
As Stake
As Payment
Best Practices
Always use MIST for on-chain values
Always use MIST for on-chain values
Handle coin splits properly
Handle coin splits properly
Consider gas costs
Consider gas costs
Related Topics
Gas Mechanism
Understand gas costs
Staking
Learn about staking SUI
Storage Fund
Storage economics