Author: Sui Chinese Assistant, Sui Network
Over the past year and a half, projects built on the Sui mainnet have brought a record number of users to Sui, the most innovative and high-performance blockchain ecosystem. Users have flocked to DeFi protocols that have achieved early success on the network, while also exploring areas such as media services, NFT markets, and games.
As 2024 comes to a close, we look back at the most popular projects during Sui’s first full calendar year. Some of these projects launched with the Sui mainnet in 2023, while others quickly gained popularity this year.
For each project, their builders learned how to program in the Move language and took advantage of features such as composable objects and kiosks. They used Sui’s unique innovations, such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions, to make the onboarding process for new users as easy as possible. Ultimately, their efforts were recognized by the Sui community and quickly adopted by users.
Most popular projects by community
To select the most popular projects on Sui, we combined community attention and data indicators. First, we compiled a list of the top 30 projects based on active accounts and activity. Then, we invited representative community ambassadors of Sui and asked them to select the projects they think are most worthy of attention from this list. Then, we voted on Discord and came up with the ranking of these projects.
🌟 Discord：
https://discord.com/servers/sui-916379725201563759
It is important to note that account and transaction metrics are biased towards on-chain projects, and while some very popular games may use Sui for digital asset transactions, the majority of activity relies on binary methods. Therefore, we hope to provide a credible perspective on the projects that will receive the most community attention in 2024.
Walrus
Engineers at Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui, proposed a new decentralized storage platform, Walrus, and launched it on both the devnet and testnet this year. Although Walrus is a completely independent platform, the builders use Sui as a coordination layer for assets stored on Walrus. Current activity on Sui is related to Walrus NFTs, showing a high level of interest in this new platform.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.walrus.xyz/
Sui Name Service
As the underlying platform that makes Sui easy to use, Sui Name Service converts complex blockchain addresses into human-readable names prefixed with the @ symbol. This format makes the names more familiar, easy to remember, and similar to social media usernames. Compared to domain names in the Web2 world, Sui names can not only serve as personal identifiers, but also support sub-names, which are suitable for complex organizational structures.
🌟 Learn more: https://suins.io/
DeepBook
Sui's first native liquidity layer, DeepBook, was launched in 2023 to support the DeFi ecosystem. DeepBook supports market and limit order exchanges, providing a convenient way to access liquidity for exchanges on Sui. As a decentralized public product, DeepBook is operated by the community and has issued its own DEEP token.
🌟 Learn more: https://deepbook.tech/
Flash
The liquidity protocol Cetus was launched early on Sui and currently provides redemption functionality with limit orders, as well as tools such as mining, liquidity pools, and treasuries, serving a wide range of DeFi user groups. Its DeepBook interface provides a unique way for ordinary users to directly access Sui's native liquidity layer. Its developer tools also support builders who want to integrate DeFi functionality into their own projects.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.cetus.zone/
Suilend
The Suilend team started building on Sui in 2024 and quickly realized that Sui provided a superior development experience for developers. Building on their experience with Solana, they launched their lending platform in March and achieved over $450 million in TVL growth in just eight months. In addition to lending, Suilend also provides exchange and cross-chain bridging services.
🌟 Learn more: https://suilend.fi/
NAVI
As one of Sui's early DeFi protocols, NAVI combines DEX aggregator, liquidity staking, and lending capabilities. With $714 million in TVL and over 800,000 users, NAVI continues to innovate and deploy new features to maximize its user potential. Read the feature article about NAVI
🌟 Learn more: https://naviprotocol.io/
Aftermath Finance
DeFi protocol Aftermath serves as an exchange meta-aggregator service on Sui. When a user enters a transaction, its technology analyzes the exchange rates provided by other aggregators and then finds the best transaction path. Aftermath also provides liquidity staking through its afSUI token and provides various other mining benefits.
🌟 Learn more: https://aftermath.finance/
Scallop
Scallop, a lending platform, is another early Sui DeFi protocol that serves a wide range of users from novices to professionals. The platform allows users to stake SUI into a pool to earn interest, or participate in more complex lending strategies. In addition to lending, Scallop now supports redemption functions and provides cross-chain bridge capabilities.
🌟 Learn more: https://scallop.io/
Turbos
Turbos is a decentralized crypto market built on Sui that provides two main functions: exchange and providing liquidity to other users. As an early DeFi project on Sui, the Turbos team brings a wealth of experience and continuous development, focusing on making it as efficient as possible.
🌟 Learn more: https://turbos.finance/
Tradeport
NFT marketplace Tradeport launched on Sui, building on its success on chains like Near and Base. Its interface makes it easy for even novice users to find and buy NFTs. In addition to the marketplace functionality, Tradeport also includes tools that let users mint their own NFTs and perform more advanced development.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.tradeport.xyz/
Most popular projects by data indicator
For those who only care about data metrics, we aggregated the top 10 projects ranked by active accounts, excluding public projects that have not yet reached the active standard. The active account metric has a high correlation with transaction volume, so we chose to use the former to represent the number of users for each project.
Wave Wallet
Wave Wallet combines wallet functionality with gaming and uses Telegram as a platform, attracting a large number of active users on Sui. Users can play fun games and use their digital assets in one interface. The company also uses Telegram as a general gaming platform. Read a feature article about Wave Wallet
🌟 Learn more: https://waveonsui.com/
BIRDS
BIRDS is another Telegram-based app that gamifies DeFi and provides a continuous interactive experience with multiple stages. Players first incubate an egg and help it level up until it hatches. The next stage of the game is to feed the bird to make it stronger and faster, unlocking more advanced game features.
🌟 Learn more: https://birds.dog/
FanTV
Video platform FanTV aims to disrupt services like YouTube and TikTok by more fairly compensating content creators. The app, which launched in India, is gaining traction with audiences around the world, consistently ranking in the top 10 apps by users.
🌟 Learn more: https://fantv.world/
Around
Aylab uses Web3 technology for advertising and has provided more than 120 million ad impressions and more than 95 million transactions. As an advertising platform, Aylab helps other projects with user acquisition and marketing, becoming an important part of Sui's business support model, similar to Google's transformational role in traditional Internet advertising.
🌟 Learn more: https://aylab.io/
Fomo
Fomo, essentially a Proof-of-Work (PoW) memecoin based on Telegram, has demonstrated high interest from users. It appears to have been launched as a promotional activity and may be discontinued. However, its high transaction rate demonstrates how Sui can easily scale while maintaining stable transaction fees.
🌟 Learn more: https://t.me/fomosuipow
Walrus
Engineers at Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui, proposed a new decentralized storage platform, Walrus, and launched it on both the devnet and testnet this year. Although Walrus is a completely independent platform, the builders use Sui as a coordination layer for assets stored on Walrus. Current activity on Sui is related to Walrus NFTs, showing a high level of interest in this new platform.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.walrus.xyz/
SuiLink
As a utility, SuiLink facilitates cross-chain interoperability by connecting a user’s Sui account with an Ethereum or Solana account. The link proves identity through a Soulbound NFT. SuiLink provides access to cross-chain rewards, priority features, and exclusive events.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.suilink.io/connect
NAVI
As one of Sui's early DeFi protocols, NAVI combines DEX aggregator, liquidity staking, and lending capabilities. With $714 million in TVL and over 800,000 users, NAVI continues to innovate and deploy new features to maximize its user potential. Read the feature article about NAVI
🌟 Learn more: https://naviprotocol.io/
Scallop
Scallop, a lending platform, is another early Sui DeFi protocol that serves a wide range of users from novices to professionals. The platform allows users to stake SUI into a pool to earn interest, or participate in more complex lending strategies. In addition to lending, Scallop now supports redemption functions and provides cross-chain bridge capabilities.
🌟 Learn more: https://scallop.io/
Flash
The liquidity protocol Cetus was launched early on Sui and currently provides redemption functionality with limit orders, as well as tools such as mining, liquidity pools, and treasuries, serving a wide range of DeFi user groups. Its DeepBook interface provides a unique way for ordinary users to directly access Sui's native liquidity layer. Its developer tools also support builders who want to integrate DeFi functionality into their own projects.
🌟 Learn more: https://www.cetus.zone/
In Sui’s first full year, we’ve seen strong user interest in infrastructure projects like the Sui Name Service and DeFi protocols, which are often early adopters of the network. The GameFi project has also attracted attention, indicating that new games coming later this year and next could be very successful.
We very much look forward to seeing more new projects coming to Sui in the coming year and leveraging its scalability to attract more and more users.
