Projects built on Sui Mainnet over the last year and a half led record numbers of users to the industry's most innovative and performant blockchain. Users flocked to DeFi protocols, which showed early success on the network, and explored media services, NFT markets, and games.
Charting this staggering growth, we end 2024 by noting the most popular projects built on Sui during its first full calendar year. Some of these projects launched with Sui Mainnet in 2023, and some went viral this year.
For each project, their builders learned how to code in Move and take advantage of features such as composable objects and Kiosk. They used unique Sui innovations such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions to make it as easy as possible to onboard new users. And their efforts paid off with accolades from the Sui community and rapid adoption by users.
Top projects in the Sui community
For the top projects on Sui, we combined metrics and community support. We first gathered a list of the top 30 projects by active accounts and activity. We then asked Sui's ambassadors, who serve as top community representatives, to give us their top picks from that list. We then ran a poll on Discord to rank these projects.
Note that account and transaction metrics favor onchain projects, while a very popular game may leverage Sui for digital assets but use a binary for most of its activity. That said, we hope to offer a credible look at the projects that garnered the most community attention in 2024.
Walrus
Engineers at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui, came up with a new decentralized storage platform called Walrus, launching it in Devnet then Testnet this year. Although an entirely separate platform, builders use Sui as a coordinating layer for assets stored on Walrus. Current activity on Sui about this project has to do with the Walrus NFT, which shows the high interest in this new platform.
Sui Name Service
As a fundamental platform making Sui easy to use, Sui Name Service translates complex blockchain addresses to human-readable handles led by the @ symbol. This format makes the names familiar, memorable, and similar to social media handles. Better than domain names in the Web2 world, Sui Names can be used as personal identifiers, and allow subnames, allowing for complex organizations.
DeepBook
Sui's first native liquidity layer, DeepBook, launched in 2023 as a means of supporting the DeFi ecosystem. DeepBook supports market and limit order swaps across Sui, giving exchanges on Sui an easy means of providing liquidity access to their users. As a decentralized public good, DeepBook is run by the community and includes its own DEEP token.
Cetus
Liquidity protocol Cetus launched early on Sui, and now offers swaps with limit orders, and tools such as farms, pools, and vaults, serving a wide array of DeFi users. Its DeepBook interface gives retail users unique access to Sui's native liquidity layer. And its developer tools support builders wanting to integrate DeFi features into their own projects.
Suilend
The Suilend team began building on Sui in 2024, and quickly realized it gave them a superior developer experience. Coming to Sui with prior experience on Solana, they were able to launch their lending platform in March, and saw rapid growth, rising to over $450 million TVL in just eight months. Beyond lending, services on Suilend include swaps and bridging.
NAVI
One of Sui's early DeFi protocols, Navi combines a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator with liquid staking and lending. Boasting total value locked (TVL) of $714 million and over 800,000 users, NAVI continually innovates, deploying new features to maximize its user potential. Check out our feature article about NAVI.
Aftermath Finance
DeFi protocol Aftermath serves as a meta-aggregator for swaps on Sui. When users enter a swap, its technology analyzes the rates offered by other aggregators then finds a route to achieve the best result. Aftermath also offers liquid staking through its afSUI token, and various other pools and farms.
Scallop
Lending platform Scallop, another early Sui DeFi protocol, serves a gamut of users, from first timers to pros. The platform lets users simply put SUI into a pool and earn interest, or engage in targeted, advanced lending strategies. Beyond lending, it now supports swaps and gives access to bridges.
Turbos
A decentralized crypto marketplace built on Sui, Turbos offers two main functionalities, swaps and the ability to provide liquidity for other users. As an early DeFi project on Sui, the Turbos team brings a lot of experience and continued development to their project, with a focus on making it as efficient as possible.
Tradeport
NFT marketplace Tradeport launched on Sui with plenty of experience, finding earlier success on chains including Near and Base. Its interface makes it easy for even the newest users to find and purchase NFTs. Along with its marketplace, it includes tools that let users mint their own NFTs and do more advanced development.
Top projects by the numbers
For those interested in pure metrics, we gathered the top 10 projects by active accounts, eliminating some that did not qualify as active, public projects as of yet. The active accounts metric correlated fairly well to transaction quantity, and we chose the former as representing the quantity of individuals using each project.
Wave Wallet
By combining wallet functionality with games, and using Telegram as a host, Wave Wallet garnered a huge amount of activity on Sui. Users can play a fun game and use their digital assets all from a single interface. The company is also leveraging Telegram as a universal games launchpad. Check out our feature article on Wave Wallet.
BIRDS
Another Telegram-based app, BIRDS gamifies DeFi and gives users a fun, ongoing experience through multiple phases. Players first nurture an egg, helping it level up until it hatches. The next phase of the game involves feeding the bird so it gets stronger, faster, and capable of unlocking more advanced in-game features.
FanTV
Video platform FanTV seeks to disrupt services such as YouTube and TikTok by compensating content creators more fairly. The app, which consistently scores in the top 10 for users, arose in India and is gaining a global viewership. Check out our feature article about FanTV.
Aylab
Leveraging Web3 for advertising, Aylab achieved over 120 millions ads served and over 95 million transactions. As an ad platform, it helps other projects in user acquisition and marketing, and is a crucial part of Sui's business support model, similar to how Google transformed advertising on the traditional Internet.
Fomo
Essentially a Telegram-based proof-of-work memecoin, Fomo demonstrates high interest among users. It seems to have been launched as a promotion, which may be discontinued. However, its high transaction rate showed how easily Sui scales while maintaining stable gas fees.
Walrus
Engineers at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui, came up with a new decentralized storage platform called Walrus, launching it in Devnet then Testnet this year. Although an entirely separate platform, builders use Sui as a coordinating layer for assets stored on Walrus. Current activity on Sui about this project has to do with the Walrus NFT, which shows the high interest in this new platform.
SuiLink
As a utility, SuiLink promotes interoperability between chains by linking a user's Sui account to an Ethereum or Solana account. The link is represented by a soulbound NFT providing proof of identity. SuiLink offers opportunities for cross-chain rewards, priority features, and exclusive events.
NAVI
One of Sui's early DeFi protocols, Navi combines a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator with liquid staking and lending. Boasting total value locked (TVL) of $714 million and over 800,000 users, NAVI continually innovates, deploying new features to maximize its user potential. Check out our feature article about NAVI.
Scallop
Lending platform Scallop, another early Sui DeFi protocol, serves a gamut of users, from first timers to pros. The platform lets users simply put SUI into a pool and earn interest, or engage in targeted, advanced lending strategies. Beyond lending, it now supports swaps and gives access to bridges.
Cetus
Liquidity protocol Cetus launched early on Sui, and now offers swaps with limit orders, and tools such as farms, pools, and vaults, serving a wide array of DeFi users. Its DeepBook interface gives retail users unique access to Sui's native liquidity layer. And its developer tools support builders wanting to integrate DeFi features into their own projects.
In this first full year of Sui, we've seen big interest in fundamentals, such as the Sui Name Service, and DeFi protocols, which tended to be early adopters of the network. GameFi projects garnered interest as well, suggesting new games launching late this year and into the next will do very well.
We are very excited to see new projects launch on Sui in the coming year and leverage its scalability to thrill more and more users.