Skip to main content

What is a Wallet?

A wallet stores the cryptographic keys that prove ownership of your on-chain assets and signs the transactions you submit to the Sui network.

How wallets work​

A Sui account is a public key and its derived on-chain address — this is what holds your assets on-chain. The corresponding private key is stored and managed by your wallet, which can hold one or more accounts. When you send SUI, transfer an object, or interact with a smart contract, the wallet uses the private key of the active account to sign the transaction. Sui validators verify that signature before processing anything.

Keeping those private keys secure is the central responsibility of any wallet. How a wallet stores and manages them is what distinguishes one wallet type from another:

  • A hot wallet keeps private keys on a device that is connected to the internet, such as a browser extension or mobile app. Hot wallets are convenient for frequent transactions but are exposed to online threats.
  • A cold wallet keeps private keys on a device that is never connected to the internet, such as a hardware device. Cold wallets are harder to use for routine transactions but are much harder to compromise remotely.

Both hot and cold wallets can be self-custodial, meaning you hold the private keys yourself and no third party can access or authorize transactions on your behalf. The alternative is a custodial wallet, where a third party (such as an exchange or a developer backend) holds the keys and manages accounts on your behalf.

Sui wallets​

Slush: A wallet built and maintained by Mysten Labs. It combines self-custodial key management with a first-party interface optimized for Sui. Slush also exposes an SDK for wallet and app integration.

Self-custodial wallets: A wallet that stores your private key on your device or hardware. Common self-custodial options include browser extension wallets such as Phantom and hardware wallets such as Ledger, which keep the key isolated on a dedicated device. Self-custodial wallets require you to safely back up your recovery passphrase. If you lose both the device and the passphrase, access to your assets is permanently lost.

zkLogin wallets A wallet that leverages zero-knowledge login (zkLogin), a Sui primitive that lets you authorize transactions using an OAuth credential without exposing that credential on-chain. A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) verifies that you are the rightful account owner without linking your Sui address to your OAuth identity. zkLogin wallets are useful for onboarding users who are unfamiliar with key management.

Transaction fees​

Every transaction on Sui requires a gas fee paid in SUI. The fee covers two costs: computation (processing the transaction) and storage (the on-chain data the transaction creates or mutates). Validators agree on a network-wide reference gas price at the start of each epoch, giving you a reliable anchor when setting your gas budget. If a transaction deletes on-chain data, you receive a partial storage rebate.

Staking​

You can stake SUI tokens to participate in Sui's proof-of-stake mechanism. Staking delegates your tokens to a validator, who uses that stake as voting power to process transactions. In return, you earn staking rewards drawn from the computation fees collected each epoch. Most Sui-compatible wallets include staking functionality. The validator you choose affects your reward rate, because validators with poor performance can have their rewards reduced.