Sui founder Adeniyi Abiodun: How to use personal experience to ignite the legend of Mysten Labs

Original title: The Road to Sui: The Journey That Got Me Here
Original author: Adeniyi Abiodun; Mysten Labs
Original translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor's note: Adeniyi Abiodun shares his personal experiences in this article and discusses how these experiences led to the creation of Mysten Labs. His team is composed of a group of experts with rich experience in the blockchain field, especially in cryptographic algorithms and system construction, who have also brought him great confidence. Mysten Labs also plans to develop global storage layers and network infrastructure in the future, while continuing to work towards realizing Sui's vision.

The following is the original content (for easier reading and understanding, the original content has been reorganized):

Imagine: Your wife is giving birth, your first child is about to be born, and you invest all your savings in a risky project. This became a turning point in my life, and eventually brought me together with some of the smartest minds in the industry to co-found Mysten Labs and build Sui.

The "magic internet money" that almost destroyed my marriage

In 2012, I was working in the financial industry, and my days and work were the same. From the time I woke up to the time I left work, I could almost tell you exactly what would happen at every point in time. I could even tell you what I would do and which subway I would take; what I would write, how I would test, how I would submit code, what the traders would say after I improved the system, and then I would go home. Everything was so predictable.

But if you know how I think, you will know that this certainty is not attractive to me. It is inevitable to feel bored when you know that everything is going according to the rules, so I longed for some uncertainty, something challenging, at least to make me feel that I can push the existing boundaries. That's when I discovered Bitcoin.

I first read the Bitcoin white paper from a colleague and thought it looked like a scam. I thought it didn't make sense until I looked at the code and reread the white paper. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a great idea.

The concept of decentralized currency immediately struck me as a much bigger picture than just mining. Bitcoin showed me that reliable money could exist outside of the traditional system. So I started buying Bitcoins and mining them myself. I started building my own mining rig at home, and over time I saw a gap in the market and started offering mining services to other people.

Until one day, my wife told me to move all these machines out of the house because there was no more free space. There were all these mining machines running everywhere. So I started renting space in data centers and accidentally started my own mining company. Then came the moment when I put all my eggs in one basket.

Imagine being in the hospital with your wife in labor and you have to admit: you just spent all your savings on Bitcoin mining machines. This was my situation at that time, and the outcome of that moment could have gone two very different ways. I was nervous and anxious, but also full of expectations. I knew it was a gamble, but I believed that cryptocurrency could change our lives.

My wife was naturally very angry, but I assured her that it was an investment in the future. I knew that only when I made well-thought-out risk decisions could I continue to pursue my passion while facing uncertainty and potential failure. So I used all my money to buy mining machines and put them in data centers. People would rent my equipment to mine Bitcoin, and I would charge a certain fee.

Most of the orders came from the US, in fact, my biggest supplier was in Texas. So, given the amount of money I had invested in suppliers and the money I was making from American customers, I decided to go to the US to develop the business myself. The original plan was to move there temporarily for six months to work with suppliers and wait for the machines to be produced, but in the end, the move became a permanent move. In fact, this was not the first time I had to suddenly move to a completely new place and adapt to new surroundings and people.

Nigerian boy with a Scottish accent

I was born in Nigeria and left my hometown when I was eight years old. My father was studying for a PhD in economics at the time, so our family moved to Aberdeen, in the east of Scotland, where he continued to study for a PhD in economics (a few years later, my brother would follow the same path). After my father got his PhD, we moved again, this time to England. He started working, but then made a bold decision - he quit his job and became a full-time pastor, dedicating his life to serving God. This made me realize that everything is possible and your life does not have to be limited by the choices you made before.

As for my mother, she was an entrepreneur through and through. She was always investing in business and real estate. And let me tell you, she was probably the best negotiator I have ever met. You would go to the market with her and she would bargain to embarrassing levels until the other party gave her what she wanted. She never took no for an answer… I may have inherited some of her abilities, but not as much.

It hasn’t been easy moving to several countries, adjusting to different environments, and watching my parents take big risks. But looking back, I have no regrets at all. My parents have always been a huge inspiration and motivation for me to move forward.

Life would be really boring if it stayed the same.

I later went to Queen Mary University in London, but to be honest I had no interest in education and just wanted to enjoy life. It wasn't until the final exams that I realized: I really should take my studies seriously. Looking at the few friends I had been dating, I found that they didn't have any future. Two people ended up in prison, and some were involved in shady things like drug dealing.

I definitely didn't want to live that kind of life. After matriculation, I took a one-year foundation course to decide my future direction. I chose astrophysics because I had always been curious about the universe. But gradually, I realized that I needed to do something more practical. Astrophysics was too theoretical for me. Theory is good, but I think my mind prefers things that can be touched and concrete.

So I switched to electrical engineering and computer science, and my love for computers, my passion for programming, and my interest in software development were really sparked. After graduation, I joined a startup and started building software and hardware for remote monitoring of oil and gas production.

Then I moved to the financial industry, where I was involved in building trading systems, trading algorithms, and risk management systems. I worked at JPMorgan and HSBC, building these systems. Although this experience was interesting, I began to get bored over time. As I said before, it all became predictable. I also couldn't see where my long-term value was, and I couldn't identify where I could make a significant impact.

I didn't want a 1% improvement, I wanted a 100x leap. I wanted to do something that I would be proud of over and over again. So moving to the United States for a Bitcoin mining company was an unexpected blessing for me, because I understood that the technology pioneered by Bitcoin was far more than just peer-to-peer cash transactions, it could change the way our world works, and I began to see the bigger picture.

Finding Clarity Through Burnout

After spending some time in the Bitcoin mining space, I felt a little disappointed because I felt like we weren't making much progress with Bitcoin. Mining is important, but what can we do beyond mining? What other possibilities are there? Because of my background in the corporate world, building systems for large banks, I began to feel that blockchain technology could be the key to solving many enterprise problems. So I decided to bring blockchain technology to the enterprise.

That's how I started working at Oracle and then moved to VMware, a software company focused on cloud computing technology. For me, coming to VMware was a new challenge. They were building an enterprise blockchain-based solution, and the development of this product was behind their competitors, and they had almost nothing except the basic algorithm.

So we had to build this new product to sell to businesses and consumers while trying to catch up to the already established companies in the industry, and we were under a lot of pressure to catch up. Because my experience in the crypto industry taught me that things change very quickly. I realized that I had to launch something quickly because I know how bad it feels to lose. If you don't give it your all and fail, you will understand that it's because you didn't try hard enough.

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I have always been a competitive idiot, whether it's playing football on the field or playing video games, I always want to win. To me, winning means winning big. I don't want to beat you 1-0 in FIFA, I have to win 6-0. For me, there has to be a clear margin to win. So I took on more responsibility in a short period of time because the workload was so overwhelming. I found myself busy with marketing, engineering, product development, everything.

But I was very driven and I was always telling myself and the team that we had to do the best and we had to get this product out as soon as possible. I worked long hours every day and I felt like I couldn't be defeated. But I soon realized the real problem was not the technology. The technology was there and we could build it, the real problem was ownership.

You see, these companies all wanted to own a piece of the infrastructure they needed so they could control it. When you have that mindset, you can't build a reasonable alliance because there's no common goal. For the first time in my career, I really experienced burnout, and it hit me like a truck, and I burned myself out in just six months.

That experience taught me that you can't equate failure with something that happens in six or seven months, you need to look at it as a long-term focus, and that's a principle we take to heart at Sui. We're not just looking for quick wins, we're in it for the long term, creating a truly decentralized internet.

Meet the 100x Team

I came to Facebook after experiencing burnout at VMware. At Facebook, I worked on a project called Libra. It was a very ambitious initiative, and Facebook had put together a consortium to build a blockchain to create a global digital currency and payment system. What attracted me to Facebook was that there was exactly the kind of coalition we couldn't build in our previous jobs: at Facebook, they were able to unify around a goal.

So the “bootstrapping problem” that I saw with Oracle and VMware still exists, but I feel like Facebook has solved it with the Libra and Diem alliance, and they’re committed to building this infrastructure for the entire world.

Our idea is to make sending money on the internet as easy as sending an email, and we think that’s a public good that can really benefit the world. Facebook has been able to build one of the best research teams I’ve ever seen, with professors from Stanford, brilliant computer scientists, and smart minds from around the world. It’s been a joy to work with everyone there, and they’ve built a really great team culture where everyone is passionate about the mission we’re pursuing.

But even with all this talent, we still face huge challenges. People are skeptical of Facebook starting a new financial system because of their past issues with public trust and data privacy. Think about it, if you woke up tomorrow morning and 200 million people had bank accounts in the "Bank of Facebook," it would be the largest bank ever.

That's a terrible thing for any country to do. Add to that the public opinion that "I don't trust Facebook, it's a monopoly." That's the problem we're trying to solve, how do you build trust when you start from a place of distrust? And for all of these reasons, Libra didn't work out.

In hindsight, I think we may have underestimated how tough Congress would be on Facebook. But I really think Zuck should be commended, and David Marcus should be commended, for having the courage to try something that no one else had tried. In failing to successfully launch Libra, Facebook actually opened the door for other companies like PayPal, Visa, Circle, and so on. So the money they invested in Libra and the subsequent decision to cancel the project paved the way for other companies.

For me, it was heartbreaking to see this great team fail because of external factors, and it was the best team I've ever worked with.

And I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

A Brilliant Team Without a Plan

I would also like to say that for me personally, the failure of Libra also planted the seeds of success. Without that failure, I would never have had the opportunity to work with the brilliant minds who eventually came together to create Mysten Labs and later Sui. Looking back on my time at Facebook, one thing that stands out is my admiration for Evan and his team.

Evan is an exceptional leader and a great visionary.

Evan was one of the key innovators of LLVM technology, which powers most iPhones and countless other devices we use every day. It was a game changer in the tech world, and his work earned him the prestigious ACM Computer Science Award, which is given to some of the top computer scientists in the world.

He also led R&D teams at Facebook.

They are like mad scientists, creating products we use every day. So when the opportunity to work closely with Evan and his team arose, I jumped on board. This experience led to a friendship with my future Mysten Labs co-founders. Seeing no end to the delays in the Libra/Diem launch, Evan and I got together and he asked me: If we were to start a company, who would you want to work with? He asked the same question to the other founding team members, and when we all gave the same answer, the result was the same, it was obviously destined.

Sam Blackshear is one of Facebook's top engineers, and the Move programming language is his brainchild.

And consensus expert George Danezis

Facebook actually acquired his company Chainspace to help build Libra, which speaks to his ability. Finally, there's Kostas "Kryptos" Chalkias, this guy's creativity is astounding.

He's the point person at Facebook for all things crypto, and he developed many of the encryption algorithms used in WhatsApp, one of the most widely used apps in the world. We all got on a call and the same person was explicitly mentioned. So we just decided to do it! No one argued about roles or responsibilities. To be honest, we didn't even know what we were going to build yet, but one thing we knew for sure was that we wanted to work together. And so, Mysten Lab was born. It was a great starting point.

A Global Coordination Layer for Smart Assets

Libra’s vision was to make sending money as easy as sending an email, built on an infrastructure controlled by multiple companies. When we started Mysten Labs, we realized that this vision was too narrow. We wanted to build something bigger, but we also wanted it to be open and decentralized.

The world is becoming digital across the board, and every asset is becoming digital by default. Today’s internet is great at transferring data, but it’s not great at transferring value or intent. If I want to send you money, we’re faced with a mess of protocols, none of which actually control the money.

So what infrastructure does the internet need to create a world where assets can be seamlessly constructed, coordinated, and combined? If we’re going to have billions of assets, and everyone has their own, how do we enable the coordination of intent across those assets in a unified way so that others can participate?

That’s what we’re here for, so out of the ashes of Libra, Sui’s vision began to crystallize — building a global coordination layer for digital assets.

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We weren’t a bunch of tech bros playing around with crypto, we had people on the team who had built systems and applications that scaled to billions of users. We had the technical expertise and real-world experience to build a solution that truly worked on a global scale.

For me, it all came together: a big vision, a team I had no doubt about, and an opportunity to make a lasting impact on the future of the internet. As we started to build, the strength of our team became even more apparent. From the fastest consensus protocol to an object-centric approach to a platform with the best developer experience in the industry, Sui is starting to take shape.

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Our complete vision is not just a global coordination layer, but also a storage layer as well as networking infrastructure. The next thing we are building is a global storage layer, which we are developing in partnership with Walrus. Then we will build a global networking layer, and we are building the entire technology stack layer by layer.

I can confidently say that there is no L1 blockchain out there that truly matches the vision or technology we are building at Mysten Labs. And, no company has the human capital that Mysten Labs has, which is why I am so sure we will win. Like I said before, I hate losing. I am a sore loser, and this is a game I know we will win.

You may be wondering why I spent so much time telling my personal story instead of jumping right into all the exciting things happening at Mysten Labs. I thought it was important for you to know my background because I want to share a more complete picture.

From the outside, it seems like it has been smooth sailing, but it has definitely not been. Like the crypto world itself, my path has been filled with ups and downs — volatility, uncertainty, and sometimes even risky and perhaps a little reckless.

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