Decentralized Manufacturing Network 3DOS Launches 3D Printing Partnership with Blockchain Platform Sui

3DOS, a decentralized additive manufacturing (AM) network based in Silicon Valley, has announced a partnership with Sui, a Layer-1 blockchain and smart contract platform. 3DOS’s partnership with Sui leverages the latter’s zkLogin technology, which will enable new users on the AM network to subscribe with existing accounts from networks including Google and Twitch.

3DOS touts itself as the “world’s largest peer-to-peer manufacturing network,” giving essentially anyone with a 3D printer the opportunity to earn money from designing, building, or even licensing parts. 3DOS’s partnership with a company like Sui not only suggests the former’s potential to increase its network’s growth significantly in the future, but also highlights how much the demand for such a service has already grown in recent years.

Image courtesy of Sui

In a press release, the founder and CEO of 3DOS, John Dogru, said, “At 3DOS, we believe that manufacturing should be decentralized. By tapping Sui to power our infrastructure, we now have the technology to enable this massive shift in our industry. 3DOS is a 3D Operating System, bridging the digital world to the physical world, allowing anyone to access manufacturing capacity and 3D printers anywhere, empowering local producers and eliminating waste, inventory, and the carbon footprint associated with international shipping.”

Adenyi Abiodun, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Mysten Labs — the originator of the Sui Network — said, “Improving manufacturing processes is one of the world’s most important challenges, and the infrastructure that 3DOS is building on Sui marks a significant advancement that will catalyze economic growth and technological innovation. Through this partnership with 3DOS, Sui is helping to create a global decentralized manufacturing network that empowers more individuals and businesses to participate in the production of physical goods.”

Image courtesy of 3DOS

As covered in the recently released white paper co-produced by AM Research and Würth Additive Group, “Always in Stock: Streamlining Inventory Management with Additive Manufacturing,” the synergy between AM and digital inventory is one of the most compelling growth opportunities on the horizon for the global digital manufacturing landscape. Anyone interested in downloading the white paper can access it here. 

3DOS’s partnership with Sui illustrates the extent to which the worlds of B2B and P2P 3D printing may come to resemble each other in years ahead. The key will be to bring the agility of the consumer 3D printing arena to the technological sophistication of the industrial AM market — and, to whatever extent possible, to combine the technical capabilities of industrial AM with the flexibility of desktop 3D printing.

The issues at play here demonstrate how, in this phase of the AM industry’s evolution, the most important catalysts for forward progress aren’t technological so much as organizational. In other words, all the right technical pieces seem to be in place to make broad-sweeping decentralized manufacturing a reality: what’s now needed is all the connecting tissue, know-how, and institutional will to cohesively put all those pieces together.