Projects built on Sui raised a total of $16.3 million in the second and third quarters of 2024, a 41.7% increase compared to the previous two quarters.
Author: Jake Koch-Gallup
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Key Insights
Sui launched the Mysticeti consensus mechanism, reducing consensus latency by 80%, bringing it down to 390 milliseconds while processing 100,000 transactions per second, significantly improving efficiency.
Sui completed integration with Circle's USDC and plans to introduce Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). This collaboration propelled Sui's market capitalization to grow by 139% month-over-month, reaching $4.8 billion, ranking it 21st in market cap.
On May 30, 2024, the number of active addresses on Sui reached a historical peak of 2.2 million. This day also unlocked 9.3% of token circulation, with newly unlocked tokens flooding the market, driving a surge in trading and transfer activities.
In the past two quarters, Sui's total value locked (TVL) in DeFi grew by 42% to reach $1 billion. This growth is partly due to new features and eco-funds introduced by DeFi protocols such as NAVI, Scallop, and Cetus, while the price of SUI also increased by 117.1% from the second to the third quarter.
Projects built on Sui raised a total of $16.3 million in the second and third quarters of 2024, a 41.7% increase compared to the previous two quarters. Funded projects include Ambrus Studio, XOCIETY, and RECRD.
Introduction
Sui (SUI) is a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) layer-one blockchain designed for high scalability and low-latency transactions, aiming for mass user adoption. The core development team of Sui, Mysten Labs, was founded in 2021 by Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, Kostas Chalkias, and George Danezis. These founders previously led Meta's blockchain projects Diem and Novi and have experience working at top institutions such as Apple, Alan Turing Institute, Microsoft, R3, and Oracle. Mysten Labs raised a total of $336 million in funding in 2021 and 2022 and raised approximately $49 million in several public token sales in 2023 (KuCoin, OKX, Bybit, and BitForex). Sui launched its mainnet in May 2023.
Sui's technical architecture is full of innovations, including an object-centric data model, the Mysticeti consensus mechanism, Sui storage fund, and the Sui Move programming language. Sui Move is an improvement of the Move language developed by Mysten Labs co-founder Sam Blackshear based on his work on Novi. Compared to other Web3 programming languages, Sui Move offers higher flexibility and security. Unlike Solidity's reliance on sequential transaction processing, Sui Move's object-centric data model allows for parallel transaction processing, improving efficiency. Moreover, five of the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities cannot occur in Move, and three others have been partially mitigated.
Sui also launched several other protocols and products aimed at improving user onboarding and experience, including sponsored transactions that allow gas fees to be extracted from end users; zkLogin, which enables Sui users to transact using OAuth credentials; Sui Bridge, a native bridge for cross-chain interoperability; and Sui Kiosk, a decentralized system for commercial applications. The development of the Sui ecosystem is led by the Sui Foundation, with Mysten Labs being the initial contributor to the Sui blockchain protocol. For a complete onboarding guide on Sui, see our coverage report.
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Key Metrics
Financial Analysis
In the first quarter of 2024, the overall cryptocurrency market grew by 63.6%. However, in the second quarter, the market entered a cooling phase, declining by 16.4%. SUI's performance aligned with the overall trend, with its circulating market cap decreasing by 15.7% in the second quarter. However, by September 2024, SUI broke this downward trend, with its circulating market cap surging by 133.3% within a month. This growth was mainly driven by the integration of USDC and CCTP, as well as the launch of the Grayscale Sui Trust. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, SUI's circulating market cap reached $4.8 billion, a 139.4% increase month-over-month, rising to 21st place in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings. Despite the token unlock in May 2024 releasing 10.19% of the total supply, which initially put downward pressure on the price, the price subsequently rose in tandem with market cap growth.
The fees on the Sui network primarily consist of gas fees generated by transactions, including computational costs and non-refundable storage fees. These fees are ultimately allocated to network validators. Due to the surge in trading activity following the token unlock in May 2024, Sui's total fees in the second quarter reached $1.1 million (approximately 1 million SUI), setting a historical high. As the market activity following the unlock gradually weakened, the fees in the third quarter decreased by 31.8% month-over-month to $750,400 (approximately 789,900 SUI).
The total supply of SUI is fixed at 10 billion, of which 1 billion is specifically allocated for staking rewards. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, the annual inflation rate of SUI relative to the remaining 9 billion tokens is 0.44%. This rate will decrease by 10% every three months until all staking reward tokens are distributed.
In addition, token unlocks are also a major source of inflationary pressure. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, 26.8% of the total supply of SUI has been allocated, an increase of 10.3% from the second quarter and 117.9% from the first quarter.
The following are key unlock events:
May 3, 2024:
Ecosystem: Unlocking 147.5 million SUI (worth approximately $262.6 million) for community reserves.
Public Sale: Unlocking 34.6 million SUI (worth approximately $61.6 million) for community access programs.
Total: Unlocking 182.1 million SUI (worth approximately $324.1 million as of September 30, 2024), accounting for 2.02% of the total unlocked amount and 1.82% of the total supply.
May 30, 2024:
Team: Unlocking 109.4 million SUI (worth approximately $194.7 million) for early contributors.
Investors: Unlocking 496 million SUI (worth approximately $882.8 million) for Series A investors; unlocking 231.9 million SUI (worth approximately $412.7 million) for Series B investors.
Total: Unlocking 837.2 million SUI (worth approximately $1.49 billion as of September 30, 2024), accounting for 9.30% of the total unlocked amount and 8.37% of the total supply.
Through these unlock events, the circulating supply of SUI has significantly increased, further driving changes in market trading activities.
In the second and third quarters of 2024, a total of 1.45 billion SUI tokens were unlocked (worth approximately $2.58 billion as of September 30, 2024), accounting for 14.5% of the total supply. By the end of the third quarter of 2024, 78.8% of the stakeable supply had been staked, a decrease of 2.3% from the previous quarter. It is worth noting that even locked tokens can participate in staking and earn liquid staking rewards. Therefore, the stakeable supply of SUI is based on the total supply rather than the circulating supply. Due to the high staking rate, SUI's annualized real yield is slightly below zero, at -0.31%.
Network Analysis
Usage
The activity on the Sui network (measured by daily transaction volume and daily active addresses) significantly rebounded after a major token unlock event in May 2024. In the second quarter of 2024, the average daily transaction volume increased by 385% month-over-month, reaching 7.1 million; however, it dropped by 53.6% in the third quarter to 3.3 million. Meanwhile, the number of daily active addresses grew by 2126% in the second quarter, reaching 490,600, and continued to grow by 31.6% in the third quarter, reaching 645,500.
In the past two quarters, Sui's daily transaction volume peaked at 37.5 million on May 4, 2024, mainly due to:
Incentive mechanism for SPAM Sui applications: This application rewards users with SPAM tokens to encourage users to send a large number of transactions on the Sui network. During peak trading volume, 82.7% of transactions came from SPAM Sui users.
The push from token unlocks: The first token unlock event on May 3, 2024, led to a substantial transfer and trading of newly unlocked tokens, further stimulating trading activities.
The number of active addresses peaked on May 30, 2024, around the time of the second SUI token unlock, reaching 2.16 million. Subsequently, in September 2024, with the launch of the Grayscale Sui Trust and the announcement of integration with USDC and CCTP, the number of active addresses rebounded again.
Despite the significant increase in trading volume, Sui's average transaction fees decreased by 59.7% in the second quarter. Fees recovered somewhat in the third quarter, increasing by 62.9%, but the average transaction fee remained at 0.0026 SUI (approximately $0.0024), making the cost of millions of transactions per day still very low. In addition to extremely low gas fees, Sui also supports sponsoring transactions to waive gas fees for users. For example, through the Gas Station API provided by infrastructure provider Shinami, the peak monthly transaction sponsorship reached 41 million transactions during the first year of Sui's mainnet launch; the sponsorship coverage reached up to 87% through Shinami's node services.
In addition, in the previous quarters, the Quest activities launched by Mysten Labs (Quest 1, Quest 2, and Quest 3), as well as the launches of products like DeepBook and zkLogin, have also made significant contributions to the growth of transaction volume and active addresses on the Sui network.
Security and Decentralization
The total amount of SUI staked gradually declined from a peak of 8.3 billion (83% of the total stakeable supply) in the first quarter of 2024. It decreased by 2.7% in the second quarter and further fell by 2.3% in the third quarter to 7.9 billion. However, due to the rise in SUI's price, the total staking value in USD showed a different trend, growing by 112% to reach $14 billion, making Sui the third-largest blockchain network by staking market cap.
Since the launch of the Sui network, the number of active validators has remained relatively stable, increasing slightly from 104 to 108. Due to the Sui Foundation and Mysten Labs holding a significant amount of SUI tokens on behalf of the ecosystem, they are able to distribute staking more evenly among validators, thereby enhancing the decentralization of the network. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024, Sui's Nakamoto coefficient was 16, higher than the median of many proof-of-stake networks. This indicates a high level of security in terms of decentralization.
Upgrades and Roadmap
The Sui network frequently undergoes protocol upgrades. Starting from version 41 of the Sui protocol in the second quarter of 2024, it has been upgraded to version 59 by the end of the third quarter. Here are some important new features:
Native Randomness: Provides unpredictable, uncontrollable, and rapid random number generation capabilities through threshold cryptography and Distributed Key Generation (DKG) technology, enhancing the fairness and security of the network.
Elliptic Curve Operations: Introduced elliptic curve operations in the Move programming language, supporting more robust cryptographic features, thereby enhancing the security of decentralized applications.
Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs): Upgraded PTBs only allow executing TransferObjects or MergeCoins operations after commands involving randomness, ensuring consistency in transaction logic.
In early 2024, Sui announced consensus upgrades that expanded its Narwhal-Bullshark consensus algorithm. The Mysticeti consensus mechanism went live on the mainnet in August 2024, significantly optimizing performance. With 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), consensus latency was reduced by 80% to 390 milliseconds, while lowering the CPU requirements for validators. Researchers tested the performance of Mysticeti with 50 validator nodes: at 100,000 TPS, consensus latency was 400 milliseconds; at 200,000 TPS, the latency was 500 milliseconds; and at 400,000 TPS, the latency was 1 second.
Mysticeti also optimized transaction processing by differentiating between 'owned objects' and 'shared objects.' This design reduces communication needs among validators while maximizing the utilization of network bandwidth, thus improving overall transaction processing capacity.
Through these upgrades, Sui not only enhanced network performance but also further solidified its advantages in decentralization and security.
In July 2024, Sui launched an indexing framework, a flexible data ingestion framework that provides developers with customized on-chain data access services. Through this framework, developers can collect raw on-chain data and derived datasets to create tailored data streams for specific applications, enhancing data processing flexibility and efficiency.
In the same month, Sui announced integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) blockchain node running program. This collaboration allows developers to more easily deploy and manage Sui full nodes in the AWS cloud environment while leveraging the high availability, scalability, and reliability provided by AWS to enhance the stability of node operations.
September 2024 Update
Sui announced plans to integrate Circle's native USDC stablecoin and cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP). On October 8, 2024, the native USDC was officially launched on Sui, making Sui the first blockchain based on the Move programming language to support native USDC. In the future, the integration of CCTP will enable the secure, permissionless cross-chain transfer of USDC across multiple blockchains, including Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, and Solana.
Additionally, Sui Bridge went live on the mainnet on the last day of the third quarter, providing essential native functionality for cross-chain interoperability. At launch, Sui Bridge supported asset transfers between Sui and Ethereum, with plans to gradually expand support for more tokens, assets, and blockchains. During the testnet phase, Sui Bridge attracted 24,000 unique Ethereum addresses through incentive programs, completing over 184,000 transactions.
Sui plans to collaborate with more protocols to fully integrate Circle's CCTP and continue upgrading its network. The network release schedule has been planned months in advance. Moreover, Sui plans to achieve the unification of exclusive objects for Mysticeti in the fourth quarter of 2024, further optimizing network performance.
Ecosystem Overview
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Sui's decentralized finance ecosystem achieved significant growth in the past two quarters. Its total value locked (TVL) grew from $592 million in the second quarter to over $1 billion by the end of the third quarter, surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time. If liquid staking and double counting are included, Sui's DeFi TVL increased by 82.5%, reaching $1.26 billion by the end of the third quarter. However, the TVL priced in SUI decreased from $723 million to $555 million, indicating that the dollar growth of the TVL was mainly driven by the rise in the price of the SUI token. During this period, the SUI token price rose by 117.1%, from $0.82 to $1.78. Over a longer timeframe, from the first to the third quarter, Sui's TVL (priced in SUI) grew by 50.8%, reflecting the underlying expansion of the DeFi ecosystem.
By the end of the third quarter of 2024, the lending protocol NAVI became the highest TVL protocol on Sui with a TVL of $374.7 million, accounting for a market share of 29.8%. In April 2024, NAVI launched the NAVI X ecosystem fund, allocating 10 million NAVX tokens to support innovation and development in the DeFi ecosystem. In August, NAVI launched NAVI Pro, offering a more user-friendly interface, advanced DeFi strategies, and higher yields. Additionally, NAVI introduced LST leverage strategies to enhance capital efficiency using liquid staking tokens.
The lending protocol Scallop reported a TVL of $168.8 million by the end of the third quarter, with a market share of 13.4%. In July, Scallop launched Wrapped sCoins to enhance the visibility and utility of Sui wallets and platforms. Additionally, in the third quarter, Scallop's historical lending volume exceeded $80 billion.
The lending protocol Suilend reported a TVL of $168.5 million by the end of the third quarter, with a market share of 13.4%. Suilend was developed by the Solend team, marking Solend's first attempt outside the Solana ecosystem. Suilend launched a points program to reward users for deposits, distributing 10 million points daily, recorded on the Sui blockchain as non-transferable tokens.
Sui's average daily decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume gradually declined from a peak of $73.2 million in the first quarter of 2024, decreasing by 0.8% in the second quarter and further declining by 32.9% in the third quarter to $48.7 million. Among them, Cetus and DeepBook led with average daily trading volumes of $34.6 million and $16.4 million, respectively. Other standout DEXs include Turbos ($7.5 million), KriyaDEX ($862,500), and FlowX Finance ($623,300).
Cetus, Sui's leading decentralized exchange, had a TVL of $169.3 million at the end of the third quarter, with a market share of 13.5%. In the second quarter, Cetus had over 1.2 million users and a total trading volume exceeding $8.8 billion. It launched the Cetus limit order feature and announced a partnership with the Sui Foundation to launch the Cetus Aquarium incubator program. In the third quarter, Cetus launched Cetus Plus, a new exchange aggregator on the Sui network, enhancing the DeFi experience with improved order jumping, splitting functionality, and faster exchange response. Cetus also launched a beta version of Cetus DCA, providing users with average cost strategies.
By the end of the third quarter, the cumulative trading volume of Sui's native liquidity layer DeepBook exceeded $500 billion. DeepBook has been integrated into numerous protocols, including Cetus, Kriya, FlowX, and Hop Aggregator. Its V2 was used by 740,000 wallets across 100 million transaction blocks. DeepBook V3 was launched on October 14, 2024, introducing dynamic trading fees, improved gas efficiency, flash loans, cross-pool shared liquidity, and the DEEP token. As of October 31, the TVL of DeepBook V3 was $22.58 million, with a cumulative trading volume of $89.23 million. The initial offering price of the DEEP token was $0.0176, with a circulating supply of 2.5 billion (25% of total supply), and as of October 31, its price had risen by 204.6% to $0.0536. Active traders (market makers) can conduct deep staking across various pools to obtain lower acceptance fees, market maker rebates, and participate in governance. The launch of DEEP has stimulated activity in Sui's DeFi ecosystem, with Cetus facilitating an average of $17.3 million in DEEP trading volume daily. With the introduction of new tokens, Sui's DeFi trading infrastructure is expected to evolve as the utility of these assets expands.
Leading Perps protocol on Sui, Bluefin, reported a TVL of $17.2 million by the end of the third quarter. In July 2024, Bluefin announced the launch of its governance token BLUE after receiving funding from Flow Traders.
Other notable DeFi protocols on Sui include Aftermath Finance, DEX aggregators, liquid staking and liquidity mining protocols; Haedal, a one-click liquid staking platform; and AlphaFi, a yield aggregator.
Other DeFi-related activities in the second and third quarters of 2024 include the launch of Fordefi's institutional-grade MPC DeFi wallet, Netki's compliance oracle, First Digital's stablecoin FDUSD, and Agora's AUSD stablecoin.
Consumers
Games
In the second and third quarters of 2024, the Sui network continued to expand beyond DeFi, making significant progress in consumer applications such as gaming, NFTs, and DePIN.
During the Korean Blockchain Week in September 2024, Sui announced SuiPlay0X1, a handheld gaming device that supports both blockchain-native and traditional games. SuiPlay0X1 will be released in early 2025, using PlaytronOS, an optimized gaming operating system based on Linux, supporting multiple game stores, including Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.com. It will integrate Sui's zkLogin and Sui Kiosk SDK, linking asset ownership directly to the device's account system. The starting price for pre-orders is $599, accepting SUI, SOL, or ETH payments.
SWAYE is a Web3 gaming platform on Sui that launched its first game in May 2024. OG Battlefront is an arcade-style Telegram game designed to create 'the most accessible Web3 games' using account abstraction, Telegram's API, and artificial intelligence.
DARKTIMES is a blockchain-based Nordic fighting game supported by Animoca Brands and developed by Animoca's Blowfish Studios, which previewed its pre-alpha game test during the Korean Blockchain Week. It launched the TIMES token in September 2024 and plans to start alpha testing in November 2024.
XOCIETY is a popular shooting game with RPG elements developed by NDUS Interactive, scheduled for early access launch in November or December 2024. It is built on Unreal Engine 5 and features both PvP and PvE gameplay, utilizing Sui's dynamic NFTs to enable in-game asset ownership.
Sui partnered with the world's largest martial arts organization, ONE Champions, to integrate its technology into ONE Fight Arena. ONE Fight Arena is a mobile game that supports Web3, developed by Animoca's Notre Game, and is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2025.
NFTs
Since its launch, the total trading volume of NFTs has reached 13.3 million SUI, a 16.7% increase from the first quarter of 2024. Leading markets by volume include Clutchy (5.7 million SUI), TradePort (2.5 million SUI), and BlueMove (2.2 million SUI). The top-ranked NFT series by quantity include Fuddies (3.6 million SUI), SuiFrens: Bullsharks (1.9 million SUI), SuiFrens: Capys (1.4 million SUI), Prime Machin (735,000 SUI), DeSuiLabs (698,000 SUI), Gommies (539,000 SUI), Egg (392,000 SUI), and DSL Old Version (329,000 SUI).
Sui Generis is the rebranded incarnation of the Tombheads NFT auction house, which migrated from the Sonic blockchain earlier this year and launched on Sui in April 2024. Sui Kiosk is used for enforcing royalties, restricting trades, and creating soulbound NFTs. The team also collaborated with Aftermath Finance to develop fragmented NFTs for its S1 Collection.
Artfi is an art investment platform that allows individuals to purchase shares of high-end artwork by dividing them into 10,000 individually numbered NFT shares. Artfi initially operated on the Polygon blockchain and transitioned to Sui at the end of May 2024. Artfi launched the ARTFI token on June 17, 2024, to pay for transaction fees on the NFT marketplace and reward stakers.
On the other hand, the multi-chain NFT marketplace and aggregator Hyperspace announced that it will cease operations on the Solana and Sui Layer-1 blockchains on September 17, 2024. During its operation, the total trading volume of NFTs on Sui reached 1.7 million SUI.
Other Use Cases
BytePlus, a subsidiary of TikTok's parent company ByteDance, partnered with Sui in April 2024, marking its first step into blockchain. BytePlus will work with Mysten Labs to adapt its recommendation solutions, augmented reality products, and other services to the Sui blockchain.
The manufacturing innovation company 3DOS announced in September 2024 that it will integrate its global 3D printing network with the Sui blockchain. This integration will enable users, 3D printers, and manufacturers to achieve global peer-to-peer connections, with 3DOS aiming to build the world's largest distributed 3D printing network.
AI startup Atoma Network announced its integration with Sui's inference network to provide AI service support for developers. These services include automated code generation, workflow automation, and risk analysis for DeFi protocols, helping developers utilize AI technology more efficiently in blockchain applications.
Institutional Interest
In the second and third quarters of 2024, Sui attracted increasing institutional attention. Grayscale launched the Grayscale Sui Trust in September 2024, a Sui investment product designed for qualified investors. Following this news, the price of the SUI token rose by 89% at the end of the third quarter.
In June 2024, UK-based digital asset custody service provider Copper collaborated with Sui to gradually expand its custody capabilities. This partnership is being implemented in phases, including custody support for SUI and native Sui tokens, as well as future staking support and DeFi connections.
Zero Hash is a cryptocurrency and stablecoin platform that integrated with Sui in July 2024. This enables businesses to embed Sui technology to transfer value between fiat currency, cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins. Institutional Zero Hash clients, including Stripe, Shift4, and Franklin Templeton, can use SUI tokens in their operations.
Infrastructure
Mysten Labs announced the launch of Walrus in June 2024, a decentralized blob storage network supported by Sui for blockchain applications and autonomous agents. Walrus aims to provide economically efficient and highly resilient data storage. Mysten Labs launched a developer preview in July, currently storing over 22 TB of data. Between August and October, they held a virtual development networking hackathon called Breaking the Ice, gathering over 200 developers building applications on Walrus. Notably, the Web3 media outlet Decrypt announced in September that it would store 100% of its content inventory on Walrus.
Mysten Labs released the Walrus white paper in September and planned the following development phases:
Walrus will become an independent decentralized network and launch its native utility token WAL.
The operation of Walrus will rely on a delegated proof-of-stake mechanism powered by the WAL token, with storage nodes responsible for network operations.
An independent Walrus Foundation will be established to promote the technological development and ecosystem expansion of the network.
In May 2024, Mysten Labs introduced enhanced features for Sui's social login primitive zkLogin, adding multi-signature recovery and support for Apple accounts. These updates provide users with more account recovery options and allow iOS apps to easily support Sui wallet creation. zkLogin enables users to create Sui addresses using social logins from Google, Facebook, or Apple without handling sensitive cryptographic material.
In June 2024, the Sui Name Service (SuiNS) introduced sub-names and new naming standards. The transition from the .sui suffix to the @ prefix allows users to bridge Web2 and Web3 more seamlessly, and sub-names can create hierarchical identities (e.g., @gia can create games@gia). This update was accompanied by an improved website and user experience. In August 2024, SuiNS announced a planned transition to decentralization by introducing SuiNS governance tokens, which have not yet been launched, and an official release date has not been announced. Future potential initiatives include shorter name registrations, NFT avatar generators, dynamic widgets, auction systems, and fiat on-ramps.
Sui partnered with Google Cloud to enhance the security, scalability, and AI capabilities of Web3 applications. Key initiatives of this collaboration include integrating Sui blockchain data into the BigQuery public dataset for analysis, using Google Cloud's generative AI platform Vertex AI to assist Web3 developers with debugging and code generation, and creating AI-based code audit tools to ensure security. This collaboration also utilizes Google Cloud's infrastructure for scalability and integrates zkLogin to bridge traditional and decentralized applications.
Development and Growth
In the second quarter of 2024, three Sui-based projects announced several funding rounds. These rounds raised a total of $15.3 million, a 33.6% increase from $11.5 million in the first quarter. In the third quarter, venture capital cooled down, with only two projects announcing a total funding of $1 million. Projects that raised funds in the past two quarters include Ambrus Studio, XOCIETY, and RECRD, with the SUI Foundation participating as an investor.
Sui Basecamp (April 2024): The largest event of the Sui community was held in Paris, attracting over 1,100 participants from 65 countries. Over two days, the event hosted 44 sessions with more than 100 speakers, focusing on Sui's development in gaming and DeFi. Attendees participated in panel discussions, social events, and hands-on workshops to gain insights into the future of the Sui network.
Sui Foundation Grants (March/April 2024): 10 projects received funding to accelerate Sui's development, with 8 projects focusing on enhancing developer experience through better tools (e.g., new integrated development environments (IDE) and zero-knowledge proof technology). Notable winners include Alphaday, Birdeye, Spark Payments, and SWAYE.
DeFi Incubator (May 2024): Sui's decentralized exchange Cetus and Aftermath Finance launched new incubators, with an initial donation of $2 million from the Sui Foundation to support early projects. These incubators aim to foster innovation by providing resources, guidance, and financial support to emerging teams in the DeFi space.
SUI Academic Research Grants (June 2024): 19 proposals from universities such as UC Berkeley, Yale, NYU, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne were accepted. These proposals focused on blockchain technology, smart contract programming, and Sui-based products. The Sui Foundation invested an additional $1 million to further fund research covering topics like zero-knowledge proofs and consensus protocols.
Sui Overflow Hackathon (March to June 2024): Sui's first global hackathon received over 350 project submissions from 79 countries, producing 32 winners. Top projects include Pandora Finance (Consumer), Hop Aggregator (DeFi), and AresRPG (Gaming).
Sui Foundation Grants (May/June/July 2024): 10 projects received funding, covering advanced analytics, DeFi, and game development. Recipients include Belong.net, Gamifly, Goldsky, Var Meta’s Unity SDK for Sui, and Verichains’ Sui Move Decompiler.
RFP Grantees (July 2024): The first batch of grantees for Sui's Request for Proposals (RFP) program has been announced. Selected projects include the minting infrastructure from Byzantion Inc., the loyalty platform from HashCase, and the consumer engagement platform from Arden Lab Inc.
Sui Builder House: Singapore (September 2024): This one-day event held in Singapore gathered over 600 participants from various communities and industries. It featured significant announcements regarding the future of the Sui ecosystem, networking, and discussions.
Summary
In the past six months, Sui has launched several significant upgrades and expanded its ecosystem. By introducing the Mysticeti consensus mechanism, Sui reduced the network's consensus latency by 80%, achieving a latency performance of 390 milliseconds under a high load of 100,000 TPS. At the same time, Sui's cross-chain capabilities have also been significantly enhanced with the launch of Sui Bridge and integration of Circle's native USDC stablecoin while planning to support Circle's CCTP functionality in the future. These technological advancements have contributed to the steady growth of Sui's DeFi ecosystem, with its total locked value (TVL) increasing by 42% to $1 billion, driven by the rise in the price of the SUI token and new features from DeFi protocols like NAVI, Scallop, and Cetus. On May 30, 2024, the number of active addresses on the Sui network reached a historical peak of 2.16 million, coinciding with the day's token unlock event.
Institutional interest in Sui is also continuing to grow. For example, Grayscale launched an investment trust product focused on Sui, while collaborations with companies like Copper and Zero Hash further solidified its position in the institutional market. In the second and third quarters of 2024, projects based on Sui raised a total of $16.3 million, a 41.7% increase compared to the previous two quarters. Additionally, Sui continues to expand its technical capabilities and ecosystem scale through collaborations with Google Cloud and the launch of infrastructure projects like Walrus. In the future, Sui plans to collaborate with more protocols to fully integrate Circle's CCTP while continuously optimizing its network performance to provide stronger support for developers and users.
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