Mysten Labs has unveiled Tessera, a business-to-business settlement prototype that allows approved companies to transfer value confidentially on the Sui blockchain. The network hides payment amounts from the public while preserving controlled access for counterparties, regulators, and auditors.
Announced on August 10, Tessera is presented as a closed settlement network for businesses. Members must pass KYC checks to join. They can settle invoices using a confidential stablecoin without exposing transaction values onchain. While the blockchain shows who paid whom and when, the amount appears encrypted to outsiders. “Institutions won’t settle on rails where competitors can see pricing and volume,” Sui stated.
The system lets a company view its own transaction details; competitors see only obfuscated data. This approach aims to address a key obstacle to enterprise blockchain adoption: public ledgers revealing sensitive commercial information like supplier pricing, trading volumes, and treasury movements.
Access control via Seal MPC. Tessera combines Sui’s confidential-transfer technology with Seal, Mysten’s system for encrypted data and programmable onchain access. Seal uses threshold encryption to distribute decryption key control across multiple parties. Its policies define who can see what, for how long, and under what conditions. For example, a prudential regulator could receive network-wide visibility, a tax authority could be limited to records involving one member, and an arbitrator could view only a disputed transaction while the case remains open. These permissions are scoped, time-limited, and revocable. No authorized viewer can move funds.
The prototype supports one-time transfers and recurring payment channels. If a dispute arises, the network can temporarily grant an arbiter access to the relevant payment amount. This builds on Sui’s existing confidential transfers, opened for public testing in June, which use Twisted ElGamal encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to verify transactions without revealing values.
No immediate price reaction. SUI traded around $0.69 following the announcement, with no clear price move tied to Tessera. The prototype remains a demonstration; no public launch date, issuer of the confidential stablecoin, or regulatory approvals have been disclosed. Mysten describes it as a step toward meeting the diverse privacy, reporting, and dispute-resolution needs of regulated institutions.
