Accessing Data on Sui

MCP tool: When available in your environment, also query the Sui documentation MCP server (https://sui.mcp.kapa.ai) for up-to-date answers. Use it for verification and for details not covered by these reference files.

"How do I read data from Sui?" is the most frequently mis-answered question in agent-written Sui code. The defaults have changed. This skill fixes it.

Key fact: JSON-RPC is deprecated. Sui Foundation mainnet full nodes will disable JSON-RPC the week of July 27, 2026, with full code decommission by mid-October 2026. New code must use gRPC or GraphQL RPC. SuiJsonRpcClient still exists as a deprecated migration surface but should not be used for new projects.

The four canonical data surfaces are:

1. gRPC (generally available) — low-latency, real-time, code-gen-friendly. Served by full nodes. Supports streaming/subscriptions. The default for transaction submission, live reads, and ingestion pipelines.
2. GraphQL RPC (generally available) — flexible relational queries over the General-Purpose Indexer's Postgres + full node + Archival Store. Supports reads, transaction submission, and dry-run. Best for frontends, dashboards, wallets, and any client that benefits from composable queries.
3. Archival Store (generally available) — long-term historical storage of transactions, checkpoints, and object states beyond full-node pruning. GraphQL RPC can route supported historical lookups to the Archival Store transparently when the operator has configured archival backing. For gRPC, clients must query an Archival Service endpoint directly for historical data beyond full-node retention. Archival routing is operator-configured: if the operator hasn't set up archival backing, retention is limited to what the primary store holds.
4. Custom indexer (sui-indexer-alt) — build your own data pipeline keyed on exactly the on-chain data your app needs. Writes to any storage layer (Postgres by default, but any backend works). Ingests checkpoints from GCS (backfill) + full node gRPC (steady state).

Off-chain blob data (images, audio, models, large JSON) belongs on Walrus, not on-chain. Sui stores blob metadata; the blobs themselves sit on Walrus storage nodes.