Written by: TechFlow
In this cycle, the market presents an unprecedented trend of thousands of chains being launched simultaneously: the increasingly lower threshold for launching chains makes each project want to launch a chain in pursuit of a chain ecological narrative with a higher ceiling. The already insufficient liquidity in this cycle is further divided, which not only makes the Matthew effect of the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker in the public chain track more prominent, but we can also observe that many star public chain ecosystems including Ethereum also show weak growth in on-chain data.
In this battle for liquidity, the community has seen an exception. Since the fourth quarter of 2023, Sui, one of the Move language public chain twins, has shown remarkable rapid growth momentum:
According to the Sui status report data for Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 released by Messari, Sui's average daily DEX trading volume has increased by 3,689% in the past two quarters, and DeFi TVL has increased by 1,459% in the past two quarters. The peak number of daily active addresses is 453,000, and the average number of daily active addresses is 24,000.
In the Sui DeFi report released recently, in the past six months, Sui's TVL has rapidly grown from almost zero to a peak of US$750 million, and the on-chain transaction volume has increased dozens of times. Many DeFi projects in the ecosystem, such as Scallop, Navi, BlueFin, etc., have frequently reported good news and delivered impressive results.
How was this achieved? Is this growth momentum sustainable?
Taking advantage of the release of the Sui DeFi report, let us analyze the growth drivers of the Sui ecosystem through the rich data provided by the report, and further explore Sui’s unique position in the current public chain track and its future growth potential.
The strongest growth potential, Sui DeFi report highlights data analysis
Before we get into the specific growth drivers, let us first understand the amazing growth curve achieved by the Sui DeFi ecosystem in the past six months through several sets of eye-catching data.
The Sui mainnet was officially launched on May 3, 2023, and ushered in explosive growth at the end of 2023 as the market recovered.
In terms of TVL, we can see that in the past six months or so, Sui TVL has grown rapidly from almost zero to a peak of US$750 million, and once jumped into the top ten public chains. This kind of rapid growth is unique in the current growth of public chains. As an important indicator for measuring the development of ecological DeFi, a higher TVL means that the network has stronger liquidity and the scope of DeFi services is deeper and wider.
In terms of on-chain transaction volume, the two-week dynamic average transaction volume of Sui's on-chain derivatives and spot transactions was US$166 million and US$125 million, respectively, also ranking among the top ten public chain transaction volumes. In addition, according to Coin98 Analytics statistics, Sui's daily transaction volume reached 40 million transactions, surpassing Solana (27 million transactions) to rank first. Compared with TVL data, transaction volume can better reflect the activity of DeFi participants in the ecosystem and is an important indicator for measuring the health of the ecosystem. The more active the on-chain transactions, the more lucrative the liquidity providers will be, and higher network transaction fee income also means that the network has a stronger ability to generate self-revenue.
In terms of the number of addresses, according to statistics released by Coin98 Analytics in June this year, among all the 23 blockchain platforms counted, Sui's total number of unique addresses increased by 45% month-on-month in May, making it the fastest growing blockchain platform. According to official website data, the total number of active accounts of Sui has reached 14.83 million, which shows Sui's broad and solid user base and rapid growth potential.
In addition, the Sui DeFi report also specifically analyzes the distribution of assets on the Sui chain. We can see that the main contributors to Sui TVL are native SUI tokens and stablecoin assets, and non-SUI volatile assets are mainly composed of DeFi protocol Tokens and Memecoin.
We know that the public chain is the bottom layer, and the dApp built on the public chain is the container that carries ecological users, assets, and transactions, among which DeFi is an important component. Therefore, after understanding the macro data on the Sui chain, let us take a closer look at the DeFi applications in the Sui ecosystem.
Currently, Sui ecology covers 20+ active DeFi projects, including decentralized exchanges (DEX), lending protocols, liquidity pledge (LST), derivatives and collateralized lending positions (CDP), etc. In the past development of public chain ecology, cases of applications rising and feeding back to public chains are not uncommon. Behind the rapid growth of Sui ecology, we also see the "frequent emergence of high-quality products" in multiple DeFi sub-tracks on the application side.
In the lending field, Sui ecosystem lending duo Scallop and Navi have made outstanding contributions in liquidity and TVL: Navi Protocol's TVL exceeds US$175 million; Scallop's TVL exceeds US$165 million TVL, and recently announced that its total revenue in July reached US$1 million.
In the field of derivatives, trading volume is highly concentrated on BlueFin, with more than 90% of trading volume coming from perpetual contract transactions of BTC, ETH and SUI. In the field of Dex, Cetus has an absolute advantage in spot trading and contributed $120 million in TVL. In addition, many projects such as Kriya, Aftermath, and Typus have achieved remarkable achievements in their respective DeFi segments, helping to further increase Sui chain data.
Sui's impressive growth data is enviable, and it has also prompted more people to explore the driving force behind the growth. In the process of understanding how Sui builds an ecological flywheel, many community members have discovered that this growth, which is unique to Sui, is due to both market rotation opportunities and technological advantages, and is inseparable from the promotion of multiple support policies of the Sui ecosystem.
Market rotation, looking for the next public chain Alpha in the new cycle
Looking closely at the Sui growth curve, we can easily see that its trajectory coincides with the market recovery cycle.
Since October 2023, the blockchain market has entered a significant recovery phase. According to Defillama data, the total locked-up volume on the chain has increased since October 2023, and market sentiment has gradually recovered. At the same time, Sui also chose to do twice the result with half the effort at the right time, seizing this market opportunity to actively promote its DeFi ecological construction, attracting an influx of users and funds, achieving significant growth in a short period of time, and becoming The focus of market attention.
Regardless of which cycle, as the underlying infrastructure that supports applications, the public chain narrative is a track that the market has repeatedly mentioned and focused on. This cycle is no exception, and people's demand for the next public chain Alpha has increased.
At present, L2's pursuit and blockade has caused the outflow of Ethereum assets to continue to grow. Although it still ranks first in the public chain ecosystem, it is no longer the target of most public chain Alpha hunters. Solana, which has experienced the impact of FTX and is reborn from the dead, is the well-deserved top public chain in 2024. Coingecko data shows that its token has achieved a 616.2% increase in the past year, and it is gradually regarded as a Beta project in the public chain track.
Based on various prerequisites, Sui, which has already begun to show its edge in this cycle, has made the advantages of Move language attract more attention again with its outstanding performance advantages, strong financial adaptability and extensive community support. More and more developers have begun to explore and use the Move language, which has quickly attracted a lot of attention. Sui, as a public chain of the Move language, has become the next public chain Alpha in the eyes of many people, and is regarded by many as the first choice for laying out the Move ecosystem.
It is worth mentioning that when talking about the advantages of the Move language, no other project is more suitable to talk about this topic than Sui: as a public chain project created by Sam Blackshear, the father of the Move programming language, as the project CTO, Sui is believed to be able to better inherit and carry forward the technical advantages of the Move language such as security, finance, and high performance. In the process of rapid growth, we have indeed seen the powerful empowerment of technological advantages for the development of the Sui ecosystem.
Based on the continuous innovation of Move, Sui has become a fertile ground for the development of DeFi
Move is a programming language for writing secure smart contracts. It was originally developed by Facebook to provide support for the Diem blockchain. Although the Diem project eventually failed after several twists and turns, due to its outstanding advantages in security and performance, crypto projects built on the Move language have flourished, and Sui is one of them.
Sui adopts Move as its core smart contract programming language, which enables Sui to perfectly inherit the multiple advantages of the Move language, especially in the development of DeFi and digital financial scenarios.
On the one hand, the Move language gives Sui stronger security and verifiability. Compared with other languages, Move handles token assets in a more native and low-level way. In the Move language, assets are specifically defined as a resource, which is distinguished from other data. At the same time, resource data must be stored under the account. During the transaction, assets must flow to one place, either transferred to another address or destroyed. They cannot be copied or "double-used". This design effectively prevents double-spending attacks and other security vulnerabilities and ensures the security of digital financial transactions. In addition, Move uses static calls, and all contract execution paths can be determined at compile time, and are fully analyzed through built-in security algorithms and verifiers, which further reduces the possibility of contract vulnerabilities.
On the other hand, the powerful composability brought by the modular design of the Move language makes the smart contracts in the Sui ecosystem like the parts of Lego toys. Developers can create new products to adapt to richer scenarios through any combination. Move is based on the combination between modules. The combination of contracts only requires upgrading and optimizing the modules. All other contracts that have used this module will automatically use the latest version, which not only saves the block space occupied by the contract, but also makes upgrades easier.
More importantly, Diem's vision is to bring a global alternative to fiat currency to Facebook's 2 billion user base, so the Move language designed to support Diem has important considerations for high performance from the beginning of its design. The Move virtual machine optimizes the execution of Move bytecode to ensure the efficient operation of smart contracts. This means that even when the network load is high, the Move language can still maintain a good response speed and provide users with a smooth experience.
Based on the Move language, Sui's parallelizable architecture allows different applications and scenarios in DeFi to run independently. Whether it is an application across different DeFi dApps or using different liquidity pools in the same DeFi dApp, Sui's performance in these cases will not be affected by the traffic in other scenarios. This means that for traders who are interested in different assets, scenarios, and strategies, there is no need to worry about interfering with each other, because each operation of Sui is completed independently.
Currently, according to the official website data, Sui has achieved a processing capacity of more than 100,000 transactions per second, and the final transaction confirmation time is only 400 milliseconds. This performance indicator greatly exceeds the performance limitations of traditional blockchains, allowing Sui to support high-frequency transactions and complex financial operations, and can greatly improve user experience and meet the market's demand for fast transactions.
It is worth mentioning that as a programming language, Move has been pursuing continuous improvement since its birth. In the 2024 version update, Move added new features such as enumeration, macro functions, and method syntax. These new features greatly enriched the developer's programming toolbox, allowing developers to more easily implement complex business logic, attracting more and more developers to participate in the construction.
Since Sui was born, many community members have jokingly called Sui the "son" of the Move language. It is undeniable that Sui's choice of the Move language has enabled it to stand on the shoulders of giants at the beginning of its development. However, in the past two years of development, Sui has also continuously launched a number of technological innovations to explore the performance and experience boundaries of blockchain, and continue to consolidate its technological advantages.
One of the strong proofs is the new consensus protocol Mysticeti, which was announced to be deployed on the testnet in May this year. Mysticeti was developed based on in-depth research on the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism. This major breakthrough reduced the consensus time of the Sui testnet by 80% to 390 milliseconds while maintaining the industry-leading throughput of the protocol. With the launch of Mysticeti, Sui will become the fastest consensus layer in the industry. This speed is very important to ensure that trading strategies, liquidations, and portfolio rebalancing are carried out in real time.
Earlier in March, Sui development team Mysten Labs also announced the launch of a new execution expansion solution, Pilotfish. During the testing and development of the Sui blockchain environment, Pilotfish (Sui expansion prototype) increased throughput by 8 times with the support of 8 machines, shortened network response time and controlled latency to less than 20 milliseconds, fully demonstrating the possibility of linear expansion.
In addition, Sui has further lowered the threshold for developers and users through multiple technological iterations, laying a solid technical foundation for introducing 1 billion users to achieve large-scale adoption: for example, zkLogin, which aims to provide great convenience for end users, allows users to log in to Web3 applications using existing Web2 authentication from Google and Twitch, eliminating the need for users to remember or record private keys; another example is the SaaS (Software as a Service) product Enoki, which helps companies seamlessly integrate Sui wallets into existing and new services. Multiple technological advances have helped Sui open a new era of interactive experience and participation for developers and users.
In addition to enabling the growth of projects within the ecosystem with multiple technological advantages, Sui also aims to create a better ecological environment for developers and users to further improve project development efficiency and success probability.
On the one hand, system stability is crucial for DeFi projects, as any short-term network interruption may lead to loss of funds, transaction failures, or loss of user trust. Sui has never experienced a minute of downtime or performance degradation since its launch. This excellent stability provides strong protection for developers and users.
On the other hand, as a project developer, you should not only care about how to implement the product, but also pay attention to how the project grows. At this time, support from the ecosystem becomes indispensable. From hackathons, Grants to RFP, Sui is further becoming a fertile ground for DeFi in the eyes of developers by providing rich resources and support for emerging projects.
Multiple developer incentives are implemented in parallel to promote the rapid development of DeFi projects within the ecosystem
Today, the development of public chains has gradually moved from the storytelling stage to the implementation stage. Under the premise that the technological advantages are prominent enough, another important sector of public chain competition is ecology. In short, it is to reach users through applications. Therefore, whoever has developers wins the world.
According to developer data collected by Electric Capital, the number of Sui developers has grown explosively in the past six months, and Sui has the largest and fastest-growing Move developer community. From the beginning of 2024 to July 1, the number of Sui's monthly active developers increased by 219%, and more than half of Sui's monthly active developers focus on single-chain development. This significant growth not only demonstrates the growing interest and participation of developers in Move development and the Sui platform, but also reflects the results of Sui's multiple effective developer incentive programs.
It is particularly noteworthy that from March to June 2024, a large number of new developers in the Sui ecosystem poured in, mainly due to the launch of the Sui Overflow hackathon. It is reported that as the Sui ecosystem hackathon event with the largest prize pool in history, the Sui Overflow hackathon has set up 8 tracks, namely consumer-oriented applications and mobile applications, DeFi, games, infrastructure and tools, advanced Move functions, multi-chain, randomness, and zkLogin. The event lasted for 8 weeks and attracted 352 projects from 79 countries to participate. In the end, 32 outstanding projects stood out and shared the $500,000 prize pool.
In addition to the Sui Overflow hackathon, Sui has also held a series of themed hackathons such as the Liquid Stake hackathon and the MOVE Online hackathon, and carried out Move HackerHouse offline events in many cities around the world, including Singapore and Chengdu, aiming to further provide developers with a platform to showcase themselves, communicate with each other, and spark creativity, and promote the construction of a vibrant and thriving diverse ecosystem.
In addition to irregular online and offline activities, on October 25, 2023, the Sui Foundation's official website was officially launched and the developer grant application portal was opened. As a long-standing grant program, Sui Grants aims to provide financial support to developers and projects within the ecosystem to start projects, ranging from US$10,000 to US$100,000, with the opportunity to receive additional funding after reaching certain milestones. In more than nine months of operation, Sui has received hundreds of proposal applications, 86 projects have passed the review and received funding, with a total grant amount of US$4.72 million. It has now grown into the backbone of the Sui ecosystem. Projects such as Cetus and Navi have received Sui Grants funding.
In addition, Sui has launched an RFP (demand response) program to address specific needs within the ecosystem and provide targeted support. The first batch of RFP grant recipients announced in the middle of the month include Byzantion Inc, a coin infrastructure compatible with Sui Kiosk, HashCase, a code-free solution for on-chain loyalty platform, Arden Labs Inc, a consumer engagement platform, and Mojito Inc, a white label website for loyalty programs, to further meet the needs of the ecosystem and create a more friendly developer environment.
Sui's ecological incentives are also committed to attracting top scholars from around the world to jointly explore cutting-edge research in the development of Web3. By focusing on blockchain technology, smart contract programming, and Sui-based platform products, the next billion users will be brought into Web3. The Sui Academic Research Award was born, providing $100,000 in support for each proposal that passes the application.
In the latest results of the fourth batch of academic research awards, 20 outstanding proposals from universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, New York University, EPFL, and the National University of Singapore were funded. The proposals include using cache to accelerate zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), automated risk management of the Sui DeFi ecosystem, and benchmarking Sui from a parallel execution perspective, aiming to further improve the security and efficiency of the blockchain platform and Sui from an industry perspective. Due to the excellent quality of the proposals, the Sui Foundation has pledged to provide an additional $1 million in funding in 2024 to support research that further accelerates blockchain innovation and popularization.
Under the diversified ecological incentives, Sui has built a platform for rapid iteration and innovation. These incentives not only attract a large number of developers to participate, but also provide them with rich resources and support. In such a dynamic environment, developers can freely explore various possibilities on Sui's platform, from financial applications to games, social platforms and other fields, injecting more driving force into Sui's ecological growth.
Recent Developments
Of course, faced with the Sui ecosystem that has achieved explosive growth, community members are more concerned about two issues.
First, will this growth momentum continue?
The answer is very likely.
On the one hand, the Sui ecosystem is about to usher in the implementation of multiple roadmaps: According to the news revealed by Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer of Mysten Labs, Sui will not only launch on-chain randomness next month, but also complete the upgrade of the second version of the consensus mechanism this month, which means that Sui's delay will soon be upgraded to about 300 milliseconds, further promoting Sui to become an industry leader in terms of delay speed. In addition, Sui will also usher in the launch of local stablecoins.
On the other hand, in addition to the long-standing regular ecological incentives, Sui will also hold a Move-themed Antalpha HackerHouse event in Chengdu on August 12. Sui's official mentors will provide guidance and help from initial ideas to code implementation on site. Participating in this event can not only win generous bonuses, but also the output projects can directly participate in the Move Online Hackathon project selection. In addition, the SUI MOVE Online Hackathon event is also in hot registration. The deadline for project submission is August 25, and participants will share a prize of $13,000.
In addition, as a leading project in the Sui ecosystem, NAVI Protocol also announced the establishment of the NAVI X Ecosystem Fund a few months ago, pledging to invest 10 million NAVX tokens to support the growth and innovation of the Sui blockchain DeFi and Move ecosystems.
By mobilizing the enthusiasm of ecological developers through a number of incentive activities, Sui will further stimulate the innovation vitality and growth potential of the ecosystem.
The second question is, since the growth of the Sui ecosystem is foreseeable, how can we better participate?
In addition to obtaining SUI tokens through exchanges (SUI tokens are currently listed on mainstream exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin, OKX and Gate), TGE and airdrop activities of multiple leading projects in the Sui ecosystem will be a better choice for more efficient participation in the ecosystem.
As the top trading platform in Sui Ecosystem, Bluefin provides users with a multi-variety trading experience of derivatives + spot products with its efficient transaction processing speed, transparent on-chain security mechanism and user-friendly operation interface. Bluefin is about to hold TGE soon. Users can earn points by trading on the Bluefin platform, or get higher points by participating in level league activities, Bluefin Stable Pools, Open Referral and other methods.
The distribution of Bluefin project token BLUE will focus on incentivizing ecosystem growth (52%), of which 13% will be used for Bluefin airdrops, 19.5% will be used to reward transactions, liquidity provision and future growth plans, and 4.5% of the token share will be used to add liquidity at launch, all of which will be unlocked at TGE.
Currently, Bluefin has been interconnected with multiple on-chain financial protocols such as CetusProtocol, Turbos Finance, KriyaDEX, AVEO, and has cooperated with well-known NFT communities such as Pudgy Penguins, MadLabs, Azuki, and will distribute BLUE token airdrops to community members of cooperative projects during TGE.
It is worth mentioning that users of Sui ecological liquidity protocol NAVI Protocol will receive Bluefin airdrops, which will be distributed based on NAVI ranking points and NAVX holdings in users' wallets. A total of 10,000 community members will be distributed, and the token distribution will be determined by a weighted system, 60% based on ranking points and 40% based on NAVX holdings.
In addition, Scallop, the leading lending platform in Sui ecosystem, has also launched a loyalty program, where users who participate in SCA staking can share SCA token rewards worth $100,000.
In summary, in addition to technological advantages, the rich ecology not only supports the rapid growth momentum of the Sui ecology, but also provides users with diverse participation options. More and more users joining will further promote ecological growth, thus forming a positive flywheel.
A new cycle, a new public chain competition landscape. In terms of current growth performance, Sui can be said to be the leader of public chains in this cycle. Its unique technical architecture and flexible ecological strategy make it stand out among many public chain projects, attracting a lot of attention and investment.
With the continuous iteration of technology, Sui continues to optimize in terms of performance, security, and user experience. At the same time, the continuous implementation of developer incentives has made more developers willing to innovate and explore on the Sui platform, promoting the diversification and richness of the ecosystem. In the foreseeable future, Sui will continue to maintain its rapid development momentum and further become the public chain Alpha in the hearts of more people in this cycle.
As the twin stars of Move, we look forward to more wonderful performances from Sui in the future.
