Sui Co-Founder Announces Confidential Transfers With Protocol-Level Supply Controls

Sui (SUI) co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun announced that confidential transfers are coming to the network, using range proofs to shield transaction amounts while leaving supply conservation entirely to the protocol.

The disclosure arrived in a thread on June 5, as Sui outlined a broader push into privacy infrastructure and agent payment tooling amid sustained market weakness.

The Design That Makes Secret Minting Impossible

Confidential transfers on Sui split a hard problem into two separate jobs. Range proofs confirm that a transferred amount is valid without revealing what it actually is. Nobody outside the transaction sees the number.

Supply enforcement works differently. The protocol itself checks that no new tokens appear from nowhere, rather than relying on the privacy proof to do both jobs at once.

That split is the key design decision. When one proof has to handle both privacy and supply integrity at the same time, it creates a larger target for attackers.

A Zcash counterfeiting bug in the Orchard system showed what happens when that design fails, allowing unauthorized minting to go undetected. Sui’s approach keeps the supply check at the protocol level, where it is hardest to exploit.

SUI Building Through the Bear Market

Confidential transfers sit within a larger push, the team says, that is active right now. The network has already shipped free tier payments and is developing native payment intents to let AI agents transact autonomously on-chain. Walrus, Sui’s decentralized storage network, is being positioned as the memory layer for those agents.

In his thread, Adeniyi described the team’s stance in the current market directly.

“Bear markets separate the teams who build from the teams who tweet. We chose building. Heads down, every day, on infrastructure most people won’t appreciate until the moment they suddenly need it,” Adeniyi Abiodun, Sui co-founder said.

The announcement follows a difficult operational period. The network recovered from three mainnet outages tied to upgrade bugs, and a prior episode in which Sui network stalls sent the token sharply lower. Delivering confidential transfers on schedule would be a meaningful signal that the team’s infrastructure-first approach can translate into shipped product.