The Sui Foundation, the organization dedicated to the advancement and adoption of the flourishing Sui ecosystem, today appointed Christian Thompson as its new Managing Director. Thompson’s elevation to the Foundation’s most senior management position comes at the end of a landmark year that saw Sui emerge as a leading Layer 1 blockchain, known for its unmatched speed, scalability, and efficiency.

Thompson’s appointment marks a new chapter for the Foundation after a series of achievements in its first 18 months of Mainnet that include:

Surpassing $1.5B in Total Value Locked (TVL)

Entering the top 10 of all blockchains in weekly DEX volume

Natively launching two multi-billion dollar stablecoins in USDC and FDUSD

Onboarding institutional giants including Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and Grayscale 

“Mainstream adoption of decentralized technology has never been more obtainable,” said Sui Foundation Board Member and CEO of Real Vision, Raoul Pal, “I believe Sui will be the entry point for the next billion crypto users. As Managing Director of the Sui Foundation, Christian will be able to bring that vision to life.”

As Managing Director, Thompson will devote his full attention to advancing the Foundation’s mission from the Cayman Islands—tapping into broad expertise gained from working across tech, financial, and blockchain to build engagement among enthusiasts, developers, and Sui’s growing global community. 

Previous to Mysten Labs, Thompson made impactful contributions as Deputy CISO at Meta and as an early member of the Libra/Diem project. Prior to Meta, he founded Knowledge Preserve and OnDetail, and served nearly a decade in various law enforcement roles. In finance, he founded The Capital Quorum and co-founded The Capitola Public Safety and Community Service Foundation.

“In less than two years, due to its scalable and accessible design, Sui has grown into a top destination for millions of crypto users," said Thompson. "Now, we face a critical juncture—where billions more users can realize the benefits of Web3—and it’s my honor to help the Sui Foundation empower this next wave of builders. I look forward to engaging developers, growing the community, and showcasing Sui as the gateway to the world’s digital future.”

Thompson succeeds Dr. Greg Siourounis, who served as the Foundation’s Managing Director at its inception in 2023. Siourounis was instrumental in guiding Sui through its launch and early achievements, including the debut of innovative products and features such as zkLogin, liquid staking, and DeepBook – DeFi's innovative wholesale liquidity layer. He remains engaged with the Foundation as a strategic advisor.

SatLayer, the leading Bitcoin restaking platform, will integrate with Sui, bringing Bitcoin’s liquidity and security model into the ecosystem and creating new ways for developers to build and for users to interact with the nearly $2 trillion asset. The move signals rapidly increasing Bitcoin DeFi (BTCfi) opportunities on Sui. 

SatLayer, as Babylon's designated restaking partner, enables apps and infrastructure to also unlock Bitcoin's massive liquidity, capital efficiency, and shared security. SatLayer’s architecture enables apps and infrastructure including bridges, decentralized exchanges, and oracles to be secured by Bitcoin. By deploying as smart contracts on Babylon Chain, SatLayer enables fully programmable slashing with minimal trust assumptions, bringing restaking on Bitcoin to feature-parity with Ethereum.

As part of this integration, SatLayer will also work with several of the largest projects on Sui including Navi, Suilend, Cetus, Aftermath, and Ika, co-developing and showcasing uses of its Bitcoin Validated Services framework and Bitcoin to the broader Move developer ecosystem.

“Sui’s move into Bitcoin DeFi points to Sui Foundation’s commitment to be a destination for BTCfi,” said Jameel Khalfan, Global Head of Ecosystem at Sui Foundation. “The combination of Bitcoin’s size and security with Sui’s speed and scalability gives developers and users new possibilities to build on Bitcoin. We couldn’t be more excited.”

“Sui is the perfect Layer 1 blockchain to utilize Bitcoin’s unmatched security and liquidity,” said Luke Xie, Co-Founder and CEO of SatLayer. “Starting with Bitcoin restaking and expanding into BTC liquidity for applications and infrastructure, this collaboration opens up incredible possibilities for Sui’s builders and users.”

SatLayer will leverage Bitcoin Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) and LSTs partners such as Lombard Finance and Lorenzo Protocol to enhance liquidity and capital efficiency for the Sui ecosystem, with Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) to come. This approach allows applications on Sui to tap into Bitcoin’s deep liquidity and unmatched security, giving Sui developers a new arsenal of BTCfi primitives and users more choices for secure and reliable protocols to explore.

“We’re excited to play a key role in bringing Bitcoin to Sui,” said Fisher Yu, CTO of Babylon Labs. “By combining Babylon Bitcoin staking with SatLayer’s restaking framework, the Sui ecosystem now has the building blocks for a powerful onchain Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem. It is a big step towards our vision of a Bitcoin-secured decentralized world.”

SatLayer’s integration brings Sui’s future as a primary destination for BTCfi further into focus after it was announced in November that Babylon, Lombard Finance, and Cubist were teaming up to launch Bitcoin staking on the surging L1 network. SatLayer is Babylon’s exclusive restaking partner.

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