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Royal lzzy
Royal lzzy

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NEAR vs Sui: My Raw Dev Take After Building on Both 🤯

#webdev #blockchain

Yo fellow coders! 👋 Scouting chains for your next Web3 gig? NEAR and Sui keep popping up in my feeds too. Both scream "scalability" but man they feel different when you're knee-deep in code. I shipped stuff on both (and debugged till 3AM 🥱), so here's my unfiltered dev POV - not financial advice, just war stories!


Quick context dump:

  • NEAR: Sharded L1, WASM contracts (Rust/AS), feels like Ethereum’s organized cousin
  • Sui: Object-centric L1, Move lang (Facebook legacy), parallel everything - weird but fast 
// Me trying to explain Sui objects to my cat:
struct KittyNFT has key {
    id: UID,
    cuteness: u64, // max 9000
}
// Cat still unimpressed 😾
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Tooling Tussle: CLI Wars ⚔️

Where your patience goes to die or thrive

NEAR’s Playground

  • CLI’s butter: near deploy ./target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/contract.wasm
  • JS/TS frontend? Glorious. near-api-js saved my sanity
  • PRO: Testnet finality faster than my Twitter regrets (seriously, sub-second!)
  • CON: Rust borrow checker haunts my dreams. That one time... 
error[E0382]: borrow of moved value: `owner_account`
  --> src/lib.rs:22:39
   |
22 |         let metadata = NFTMetadata::new("Epic Fail NFT".to_string(), owner_account);
   |                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ value borrowed here after move
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  • Verdict: Web2 devs will hug this. Sharding? Barely notice it til you scale.

Sui’s Move Madness

  • sui client publish --gas-budget 100000000 = your new incantation
  • Move analyzer catches bugs pre-runtime? Witchcraft! 🔮
  • PRO: Parallel tx go brrrrr. Deployed 10k NFT mint without breaking sweat
  • CON: Object model rewires your brain. Spent 4 hours debugging cause I forgot UID in struct 🤦‍♂️
  • VS Code extension’s decent but docs feel like IKEA instructions sometimes

Real talk: NEAR’s comfier for weekend hacks. Sui when you need obscene throughput (gaming, micro-txs). But bruh... Move’s learning curve? Like learning Mandarin mid-sprint.

Protocol Deep Dive: Where Magic Happens ✨

Or where everything catches fire

NEAR’s Sharding Samba

  • Nightshade shards = tx processing conga line 💃
  • Async cross-contracts? Cheat code for DeFi legos
  • Storage staking: Stake NEAR for data (no ETH-style rent!)
  • User vibe: "Whoa it’s fast" + gas cheaper than TikTok ads

Sui’s Object Rave

  • No shared state = parallel everything. Narwhal consensus upgrade? Chef’s kiss 🤌
  • Byzantine Broadcast sounds villainous but means no tx ordering bottlenecks
  • Sponsored txs let users skip gas - UX win!
  • User vibe: "IS THIS EVEN BLOCKCHAIN?!" (when TPS hits 297k)

Gotcha: Sui’s object model means NO GLOBAL STATE. Need leaderboards? Hello off-chain indexers. NEAR’s shards sometimes argue like toddlers - cross-shard comms add latency.

Killer Features That Made Me 👀

NEAR’s Secret Weapons

  • Chain Signatures: Sign ETH txs from NEAR acc - wild for cross-chain without bridges
  • BOS components: Literally copy-paste frontend widgets from other dApps 
<Widget src="mob.near/widget/Profile" props={{ accountId }} />
// Why build when you can lego?
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Sui’s Dope Sh*t

  • zkLogin: Users sign in with Google/Facebook? Actual wizardry 🧙
  • Kiosk stdlib: NFT marketplaces in 20 lines of Move (no custom contract hell)
  • Sponsored tx batching: Users pay $0 gas ever. Growth hack mode unlocked 💸

Final Wisdom Nuggets 💡

  • Build on NEAR if: You miss JavaScript, want gentle onboarding, or do social dApps. Prototype speed: 10/10.
  • Choose Sui if: You need atomic chaos (100k NFT drop?), care about tx parallelism, or dig Move’s safety.
  • Avoid both if: You enjoy paying $15 gas on Ethereum (masochist alert 🚨)

Seriously - testnet BOTH. Sui Devnet’s free faucets, NEAR testnet’s dummy-proof. Deployed on either? Roast me in replies with your horror stories 👇

PS: Debugged a Sui object bug by yelling at rubber duck yesterday. Duck’s fine. My pride? Not so much.

PPS: Market cap ranks change weekly - DYOR before apeing!

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