Former Facebook devs dream of sending money by email with their Sui blockchain

When four former Facebook engineers started Mysten Labs two years ago, one of their motivations was completing the work they had began while they were still at the social media giant started by Mark Zuckerberg.

Part of that body of work included finding a way to make sending money, or crypto, over the internet as simple and basic as the most basic of online communication.

“While we were at Facebook, our goal was to make sending money as easy as [sending] email,” Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun told The Block in an interview. That dream, which according to Abiodun was not realized while at Facebook (now Meta), may now be finally coming true thanks to Sui, the Layer 1 blockchain created by Mysten Labs.

Eliminating the complexity of crypto

Those who believe in crypto populate an engaged community, but for some startups — especially unicorns like Mysten Labs, which have raised hundreds of millions of dollars — the rate of adoption and onboarding new customers has moved slower than expected.

Some companies, like Mysten Labs, predict making it easier for people to use crypto is the ultimate solution.

“We’ve been to able invent the technology that effectively allows anybody in the world … to send money across the world using just a standard web2 identity,” said Abiodun, adding that with the Sui blockchain, Mysten Labs has found a way to allow people to send money to one another even if they don’t have a crypto wallet. That’s made possible in part, he said, by a verification system Mysten Labs invented called “zkLogin.”

“It’s the chain doing that verification using two zero-knowledge proofs,” he added. “That means any application in the world can effectively use Sui as a mechanism for sending assets across the world without ever worrying about the complexity of crypto.”

Complexity has been a big deterrent

People worrying about that complexity has been a big deterrent to widespread adoption of blockchain-enabled applications which could otherwise allow more people to cheaply and securely send funds across the world, according to Abiodun.

By his estimation, while there are more than 5 billion people online using web2 accounts, there are about 16 million active crypto wallets in the world.

“As a user, day to day, the idea that I have to download a wallet or buy gas [to transfer funds using crypto] is nonsensical. You just killed 99.9% of the world,” Abiodun said.

Moody’s said this week that although Ethereum, like Sui a Layer 1, “remains the dominant force” among public blockchains, its “adoption has been held back by speed, scalability, and security issues.”

Mysten Labs doesn’t appear to be the only company that believes making it easier to buy and sell crypto, or send and receive funds using blockchain applications, should be easier. Many companies have recently announced new initiatives in hopes of making using crypto easier for consumers. Old school PayPal has announced several new initiatives, while this week digital wallet provider Giddy announced an integration with Stripe aimed at making “cryptocurrencies more accessible to the general public.”

Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, rolled out last week a way for users to transfer money to each other by sending links through messaging apps like WhatsApp or social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.

Avoiding closed-loop systems

While Coinbase’s initiative might help spur additional adoption, it is the type of centralized system Mysten Labs’ founders saw Facebook trying to develop and one they want to avoid with Sui, said Abiodun.

“The problem with what they have is it is a closed-loop system. You have to be bought into the Coinbase ecosystem, you have to be willing to onboard with a Coinbase wallet,” said Abiodun. “With what we’re talking about here, no need for a wallet, not a closed loop.”

Mysten Labs’ hope is that use of Sui scales exponentially as more and more companies and applications build on it. “We have no interest in building the apps that dominate the ecosystem,” said Abiodun.

Sui is considered an open standard, meaning anyone can build on the blockchain.

Valuation tops $2 billion

While the Layer 1 space is especially competitive, Mysten Labs has had significant success on the funding side. In September of last year, the company closed a $300 million fundraise at a valuation that topped $2 billion.

Mysten Labs backers are some of the biggest VCs in the space including Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto unit, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton and Coinbase Ventures.

Besides Abiodun, the other former Facebook engineers who form part of Mysten Labs’ original core include CEO Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear and George Danezis. They founded the company in 2021.