Who Is Evan Cheng and Why Sui Still Trades 3% Below Its 200-Day Average

Evan Cheng co-founded Mysten Labs in 2021 and runs it as CEO, and the Sui blockchain his team built went live on 3 May 2023. SUI closed at 0.8143 on the Friday 18 September 2026 daily close, 11.58% above its 50-day mean and 3.15% below its 200-day mean. Only eight of the 63 perps with a 200-day history closed inside that spread.

On that close SUI gained 9.86%, the 19th-largest one-session move among the 118 perps carrying an 18 September bar, and 90 of those 118 closed higher. The gain cleared the 50-day average and stopped short of the 200-day, which still runs 13.2% above the shorter line. One session does not repair a year.

Who Is Evan Cheng?

Evan Cheng is the co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs, the company that built the Sui Layer 1 blockchain. Mysten's own about page lists him first among five co-founders, and he has held the title since the company started in 2021.

Mysten's board added a second name to the top of the company on 9 January 2025, when it appointed Kevin Boon as president out of the chief legal officer seat. That announcement places him alongside "CEO Evan Cheng", so the chief executive job didn't move.

What Did Evan Cheng Build Before Sui?

Cheng spent ten years at Apple, from 2005 to 2015, on compilers and low-level developer tools. His WebX Asia 2023 speaker profile then puts him at Facebook from 2015 to 2018, running a programming language and runtime organisation of nearly 200 people.

Novi Financial took the next three years. He built and led Novi Research, and that group produced the Move programming language that both Sui and Aptos run on. Our page on the Aptos co-founder Mo Shaikh covers the other side of that split.

Evan Cheng's LLVM work predates all of it. A University of Illinois notice dated 12 April 2013 names Vikram Adve, Chris Lattner and Cheng as recipients of the ACM Software System Award for LLVM, and it describes Cheng as an Apple software engineer.

ACM's own award pages refuse every client we tried, so this piece dates the announcement and claims no award year.

Who Are the Other Mysten Labs Founders?

Four names share the founding line with Cheng. Sam Blackshear is CTO, Adeniyi Abiodun is CPO, Kostas Chalkias is chief cryptographer and George Danezis is chief scientist.

That bench is why Move's safety record reaches the price. Our page on the Move flaw that touched Aptos and Suicovers the incident, and Chalkias and Danezis are the two names you check when a cryptography claim comes out of Mysten.

Founder-led Layer 1s are their own category, and the Injective co-founder Eric Chen runs a version of the same playbook on a derivatives chain.

When Did Sui Mainnet Launch?

Sui mainnet launched on 3 May 2023, and Sui's own forum named the date on 19 April 2023 in a two-sentence post. Phemex listed the SUIUSDT perpetual at 12:30 UTC on that same UTC day, which makes the market and the chain exactly as old as each other.

The spot pair opened 25 minutes earlier at 12:05 UTC. Liquid staking arrived much later, and our guide to the Sui staking protocol Haedal covers where SUI goes once it leaves a trading account.

Why Does Evan Cheng's Chain Trade Below Its 200-Day Average?

The arithmetic is plain. SUI's 50-day mean close on the Friday 18 September bar is 0.7298 and its 200-day mean is 0.8408, so the short average runs 13.2% under the long one. The 0.8143 close cleared the first and missed the second by 3.15%. What you're reading in that gap is one violent session landing on a chain that spent most of the preceding year lower. SUI hasn't closed above its own 200-day mean since 9 October 2025, which is 344 bars before the anchor.

2026 gives the same picture from another angle. The highest close of the year is 1.9026 on 6 January and the lowest is 0.6513 on 18 August, so the 18 September close lands nearer that floor than that ceiling.

Of the 118 perps with an 18 September bar, 63 carry 200 daily bars or more. Eight of those 63 closed above their 50-day mean and below their 200-day mean, and two of the eight are SUI in its USDT and USDC quotes. The rest run from Dogecoin and Hedera to silver and Tesla.

The window has limits and they matter. Our 1,000-bar file starts on 24 December 2023, seven months after mainnet, so it holds no launch-day price. Inside that window SUI's highest close is 5.2896 on 4 January 2025 and its lowest is 0.534 on 5 August 2024, and neither figure is an all-time anything.

How to Trade SUI Futures on Phemex

Phemex lists SUIUSDT as a live perpetual at 50x maximum leverage, with funding settled every eight hours at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC. The product feed carries those terms, and each contract is worth one SUI.

If you want the spread itself as a trade, the two levels to watch are the 200-day mean at 0.8408 and the 50-day at 0.7298. A close back under 0.7298 hands back the 18 September move, and a close above 0.8408 is the level that changes the picture.

At 50x a 2% adverse move is your whole margin, and the 18 September session covered 9.86% in a day.

Funding settles three times a day on this contract, so a position you carry across a weekend pays or collects six times before the next US session opens. That's the running cost people forget when they hold a perpetual for a view that takes weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Evan Cheng the founder of Sui?

He is one of five co-founders of Mysten Labs, the company that built Sui. His 2023 WebX Asia profile put Mysten past $330 million raised and over 120 employees.

How far has SUI moved beyond one session?

SUI closed 12.36% higher than seven sessions earlier and 15.36% higher than thirty sessions earlier, both measured to the Friday 18 September close.

How much notice did Sui give before mainnet?

14 days. Sui's forum named the launch date on 19 April 2023, and Phemex had the SUIUSDT perpetual live at 12:30 UTC on 3 May.

How much SUI changed hands on 18 September?

The perpetual turned over about $21.3 million in quote volume on that bar, taken from the turnover column of the kline file.

Where did SUI rank among Phemex perps on that session?

19th of the 118 perps carrying an 18 September bar, and its USDC-quoted twin finished 18th at 9.93%.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.