Mysten unveils Tessera, a confidential B2B settlement network built on Sui

Mysten Labs, the company behind the Sui Layer-1 blockchain, has introduced Tessera, a confidential settlement network designed specifically for business-to-business invoice payments. The network restricts access to KYC-verified members, essentially creating a walled garden where companies can settle payments privately while still meeting compliance requirements.

What Tessera actually does

At its core, Tessera is a settlement layer that lets businesses pay invoices to each other with confidentiality baked into the protocol. The KYC-gating means every participant has been identity-verified before they can transact, which addresses one of the biggest friction points enterprises face when considering blockchain rails: the tension between transparency and privacy.

Tessera attempts to solve this by keeping transaction details confidential among verified participants while still leveraging the settlement guarantees of the underlying Sui network. The product fits neatly alongside Mysten’s existing Seal protocol, which provides on-chain encryption and access control capabilities.

Mysten’s enterprise ambitions

Mysten Labs was founded in 2021 by former Meta engineers who had worked on the ill-fated Diem project. The Palo Alto-based company raised $300M at a valuation exceeding $2B.

The network has processed over $1 trillion in stablecoin volume, a figure that positions Sui as a serious contender in the payments infrastructure space rather than just another smart contract platform competing for DeFi users.

The privacy-compliance balancing act

Tessera’s architecture suggests Mysten believes privacy and compliance are not inherently at odds — that you can have confidential transactions between parties who have already proven their identities. This approach mirrors what traditional financial networks like SWIFT already do, where banks transact through verified channels without broadcasting individual transaction details publicly. The difference is that Tessera runs on blockchain infrastructure, potentially offering faster settlement, lower costs, and programmable payment logic.

Mysten hasn’t disclosed a participant list or launch timeline, which means the gap between announcement and meaningful adoption remains an open question.

The competitive landscape includes traditional payment processors like Visa and Mastercard building their own blockchain settlement capabilities, JPMorgan’s Onyx platform handling billions in daily transactions, and newer entrants like Circle with its USDC ecosystem actively courting enterprise treasury teams.