Blockchain platform Sui announces the launch of its full beta for gRPC support
Sui Blockchain has announced a significant upgrade to its Full Node API, introducing the high-efficiency communication protocol, gRPC. This move aims to offer developers a faster, more developer-centric, and reliable interface for interacting with blockchain data.
The upgrade, available in the current beta release, includes the SubscriptionService, which enables server-side streaming APIs for real-time on-chain events. This service eliminates the need for inefficient polling methods, enhancing real-time data synchronization, particularly beneficial for use cases such as trading platforms and analytics dashboards.
Sui Blockchain's vision for reshaping blockchain data infrastructure is evident in the separation between raw and derived data, and the support for batch and streaming APIs. This separation allows for a modern, scalable architecture, where raw blockchain data (served efficiently by gRPC) can be clearly distinguished from richer derived data layers (GraphQL).
One of the key advantages of gRPC over JSON-RPC is its lower latency and higher throughput. GRPC uses HTTP/2 and binary serialization with Protocol Buffers, reducing payload sizes by up to 60% versus JSON. This results in faster data transmission, as demonstrated by benchmarks showing 7x speed improvements.
Additionally, gRPC offers strong typing and auto-generated client support across multiple languages (Rust, Go, TypeScript, Python), enabling safer, maintainable, and scalable integration for developers. GRPC's support for real-time streaming and bidirectional communication also sets it apart, allowing efficient, continuous data flows such as live subscriptions to on-chain events—something JSON-RPC lacks.
Moreover, gRPC's more compact and efficient communication reduces bandwidth usage and cloud infrastructure costs, demonstrated by case studies showing up to 50% savings. The gRPC architecture opens up new possibilities for application design, enabling more responsive and efficient applications.
For exchanges, the update promises quicker transaction execution and verification. Sui Blockchain has made available MovePackageService, TransactionExecutionService, and SignatureVerificationService for developers. Indexers and data providers can maintain robust APIs through a combination of live subscriptions and batch querying.
The Sui Foundation considers gRPC to be the canonical API standard for Full Nodes, replacing JSON-RPC over time. The beta release of gRPC support is a foundational milestone in Sui's evolution, positioning the platform to better support future decentralized applications and services within the Web3 ecosystem. The Sui Foundation is also laying the groundwork for a next-generation indexer framework to meet the demands of increasingly complex Web3 applications.
In conclusion, the introduction of gRPC to Sui Blockchain's Full Node API offers lower latency, richer semantics, real-time streaming, and stronger developer tooling, making it better suited for modern, scalable blockchain applications needing fast, typed, and maintainable data access.
The SubscriptionService, enabled by gRPC in Sui Blockchain's Full Node API, is especially beneficial for dashboards that require real-time data, such as trading platforms or analytics, as it eliminates the need for inefficient polling methods. Sui Blockchain's vision for data-and-cloud-computing advancements is demonstrated by the adoption of gRPC, which offers developer-friendly data-access solutions through strong typing and auto-generated client support across multiple languages.
