Access Gate — on-chain overview

access_gate is a small, generic Sui Move package for NFT-gated access. A Gate describes one access class (a price, who gets paid, and what kind of pass it mints). Buying from a gate mints an access NFT — the proof a holder presents to whatever the gate protects: an upload relay, a members-only site, an API, encrypted content, or anything else. The package knows nothing about any particular consumer.

What lives on-chain

Object	Kind	Purpose
Gate	shared	One access class: price, payment recipient, pass flavour, pause/freeze state, NFT display defaults.
AdminCap	owned (gate creator)	Authority over exactly one gate: change settings, airdrop, freeze.
AccessNFT	owned, transferable	A pass that can be sent or traded.
SoulboundAccessNFT	owned, non-transferable	A pass bound to the wallet that received it.
PlatformConfig	shared (one per package)	Platform treasury, commission terms (rate + minimum) and the free-gate fee.
PlatformAdminCap	owned (platform operator)	Authority to change the platform treasury, commission terms and free-gate fee.

Pass flavours

• Unlimited pass (default_uses = 0) — valid for as long as it is held.
• Single-use pass (default_uses = N) — carries N uses; each use is spent on-chain by the holder calling consume, which records a nonce (and the transaction digest identifies the spend) so the service being accessed can bind one grant to one use.

Money flow

purchase is permissionless and atomic: the buyer pays at least the gate price; the platform commission goes to the platform treasury, the rest to the gate's payment recipient, any overpayment is refunded, and the pass is minted to the buyer — all in one transaction.

• Commission: 0.2% of the price by default, but never less than 0.0005 SUI and never more than 10% of the price. A paid gate therefore costs at least 0.005 SUI.
• Free gates (price 0) pay a one-off platform fee (1 SUI by default) when they are created or made free; after that, passes are free to claim.
• Airdrops (passes granted by the gate's admin) pay the same commission a purchase would, so a gate cannot sell off-chain and grant on-chain to avoid it.

The platform operator sets these terms in PlatformConfig; see the API reference.

Trust boundaries (summary)

• The chain enforces ownership, pass validity per gate, use counts, payment routing and the commission cap.
• A gate creator controls their own gate until they freeze it (make_gate_immutable), which is irreversible.
• The platform operator can change the treasury and commission terms (never above 10% of a price) for every gate of this package, including frozen ones — except frozen gates whose policy locked the commission.
• Each gate carries an immutable policy chosen at creation (no freezing while paused, commission lock, pause blocks decryption, pause blocks access); the tool that creates a gate decides it, and buyers can read it.
• Off-chain services that accept passes are responsible for replay protection when they rely on single-use consumption — see the developer guide.

Deployed testnet package: 0xd7ddaa94b74330979b2b618fc81206d160a264f1c9ca148a77fa2144301388c9 (PlatformConfig 0x3f81489df58233d96798f34ad44de325e1b4df7e4d615affe72ca181969ee7b5). The superseded 0xa55789…, 0x1a81ca… and 0x0bedd0… packages keep working for gates created on them. Mainnet: not yet published.

---

Canonical source: @meddleware/access-gate-sui → docs/onchain/overview.md — maintained with the Move package; edit it there, not on this site.