From "Fastest L1" to "Programmable Internet Stack": The Underlying Logic Behind the Value Upgrade of the SUI Public Chain

As the Web3 technology stack continues to evolve, smart contract languages are migrating from Ethereum-dominated Solidity to the more secure and resource-abstracting Move language. Move was originally developed by Meta for its cryptocurrency project Diem and features first-class resources and formal verification friendliness, gradually becoming an important language option for the underlying architecture of the new generation of public chains.

In this evolutionary context, Aptos and SUI have become the dual core representatives of the Move ecosystem. Aptos, launched by the original Diem core team, continues the native Move technology stack, emphasizing stability, security, and modular architecture; while SUI inherits the Move security model and introduces object-oriented data structures and parallel execution mechanisms, forming a SUI Move branch that achieves breakthroughs in performance and innovations in development paradigms, reconstructing on-chain resource management and transaction execution models. SUI is a Layer 1 that reconstructs the smart contract execution mechanism and on-chain resource management from first principles. It is not competing for "high TPS," but is rewriting how blockchains should operate. This makes SUI not only powerful in performance but also leading in paradigm, serving as the technical foundation for complex on-chain interactions and large-scale Web3 applications.

1. Breaking the Encirclement, Reshaping the Public Chain Landscape

After Solana enters the Firedancer era, its performance curve may remain leading; however, it is still a "single-chain high-frequency trading" paradigm. SUI attempts to respond to the demands beyond the performance arms race with horizontal stacking + end-to-end privacy/storage. This constitutes a significant difference compared to Aptos (also Move, but still one-dimensional scaling) or Sei (special chain, liquidity depth concentration). For investment institutions, this means:

• If you prioritize high TPS + continuous transaction fees, Solana and dedicated chains may yield faster returns;
• If you value "new type applications" and horizontal interface control, the alpha of SUI comes from the still unsaturated SaaS/privacy/offline track;
• Aptos and SUI have a high overlap in DeFi and BTCFi, and caution is needed to avoid competition within the track.

Comparison with Solana: Solana has undergone multiple rounds of bull and bear markets, boasting a large ecosystem. As a latecomer, SUI has clear advantages: it uses the more secure Move language, avoiding the vulnerabilities caused by Solana's Rust+Sealevel parallel processing, and has lower hardware requirements, resulting in lower costs for validation nodes, which is beneficial for decentralization. In terms of performance, the two are comparable, with Solana having slightly higher TPS while SUI has lower confirmation delays. In terms of ecosystem, Solana has more projects and users, focusing on complex DeFi, while SUI is growing faster, and its user activity once nearly caught up, achieving differentiation through new fields like BTCFi and LSD. The Solana community is mature, while SUI's international community still needs to expand. In the future, both may coexist, with Solana leaning towards a crypto-native ecosystem and SUI focusing more on Web2 penetration and gaming socialization. Both pursue performance limits: Solana relies on Firedancer's multi-threading, while SUI depends on the Mahi-Mahi upgrade.

Comparison with Aptos: Aptos and SUI both originate from Libra/Diem, with Aptos launching first and having once held the title of "first Move chain" along with a high valuation. Over the past year, the development of the Aptos ecosystem has been slow, with user and developer activity levels lower than SUI. Reasons include: Aptos uses a complex Block-STM parallelism, resulting in a noticeable performance drop under high concurrency, while SUI's object model is more efficient; Aptos is positioned as a robust financial infrastructure, primarily revolving around DeFi and NFTs, with a style similar to Ethereum clones; SUI attempts a diverse narrative, experiencing rapid user growth (with 8.03 million new token holders far exceeding Aptos), but with higher risks. In terms of incentives, Aptos has had airdrops but lacks sustained incentives, while SUI, although lacking airdrops, receives substantial support from its foundation, with monthly active addresses and on-chain transaction volumes better than those of Aptos. The Aptos team has strong financial backing, and in the future, it may focus on institutional finance or the East Asian market, but currently, the market favors SUI.

In comparison with Sei: Sei is a dedicated trading chain, based on Cosmos, focusing on order book trading, with a block time of about 500ms. It attempts to seize the market during Solana's outages, gaining high short-term popularity, but its TVL and user growth have not been sustained, and its ecological development is limited. Its positioning is too narrow, relying on liquidity mining, making it difficult to form a complete ecosystem. In contrast, SUI takes the general L1 route, supporting diverse applications and exhibiting stronger risk resistance. Sei's cross-chain compatibility and language advantages are inferior to SUI's, and although it may transform or fully integrate into the EVM ecosystem, it is unlikely to threaten SUI in the short term. More notably, there is Linera, incubated by Mysten, which is positioned for high-frequency micropayments, possibly serving as a scaling sidechain for SUI, differing in positioning from SUI.

Compared to Ethereum L2: The Ethereum L2 ecosystem (like Arbitrum, Base) is thriving, with a TVL exceeding $2 billion. The advantage of SUI lies in ultra-low latency and high concurrency, which Rollups find hard to match, along with low Gas fees, making it suitable for high TPS games and other applications. Meanwhile, Ethereum L2 enjoys strong network effects and security endorsements. The competition between SUI and L2 is essentially a competition between a new paradigm (public chain) and a traditional paradigm (Rollup), which may coexist in the long term, while in the short term, it depends on who can better meet application needs.

II. Soaring Forward, Ecological Data Shines

Since the SUI mainnet went live in May 2023, user growth has shown an exponential trend: by April 2025, over 123 million user addresses had been created on the SUI chain. This number is nearly approaching the cumulative address count of established public chains like Tron. In the second half of 2024, the average monthly active addresses on SUI were approximately 10 million; however, starting from mid-February 2025, this metric experienced a dramatic leap, steadily exceeding 40 million by mid-April, more than quadrupling the monthly active addresses. In terms of new users, a "turning point" occurred at the end of 2024 ------ the average number of new wallet addresses per day rose from 150,000 to a sustained level of over 1 million thereafter.

In particular, the rise of new public chains is often accompanied by a large influx of cross-chain funds. SUI welcomed its first wave of traffic through third-party bridging in the second half of 2024: by November 2024, approximately $944.8 million had been bridged in total. By mid-2025, the total locked amount of SUI cross-chain assets (bridged TVL) is about $2.55 billion. This indicates that in addition to the internal TVL of DeFi, there are also a substantial amount of assets held as bridge assets, supporting the liquidity demand on SUI. Furthermore, as DeFi activities heat up, the supply of SUI ecosystem stablecoins has also risen significantly: by mid-April 2025, the market capitalization of SUI stablecoins reached a historical high of over $800 million. This scale is already comparable to the stablecoin levels of established public chains like Tron, highlighting the increasing trust users have in the SUI network for value storage and transfer. In terms of stablecoin composition, USDC remains the absolute dominant force, consistently accounting for over 60% of the market capitalization. USDT was also issued on SUI by the end of 2024, maintaining a certain level of activity.

Although it still lags behind Solana in terms of throughput, SUI has fully covered high-frequency scenarios such as on-chain order book DEX, real-time PvP, and social interactions. Due to fast finality + DAG parallel execution, it naturally fits micro-payments, in-game asset exchanges, and social "likes/comments" types of writes. With the upcoming upgrade targeting >400000 TPS, SUI is continuously solidifying its scalability moat. However, the 150 min downtime event on 2024-11-21 serves as a warning that the core protocol's stability under high concurrency boundary conditions still needs continuous verification. Moreover, low average Gas is the core selling point for SUI to attract developers of "on-chain real-time applications"; however, if peak rates repeatedly hit high levels, there may be user loss in gaming and social scenarios. Holders/stakers need to pay attention to the parameters of the storage fund and the rhythm of L2 solutions to assess the long-term cost curve.

Currently, the SUI ecosystem data is quite impressive: First, the resilience of its capital structure is forming. The steady-state TVL in Q2 2025 is approximately 1.6 to 1.8 B USD, with stablecoins + LSD accounting for about 55%. Even without incentive subsidies, retention is possible ------ indicating that the "sticky capital" after the hot money cycle has initially settled. In addition, the proportion of institutional addresses holding increased from 6% to 14% (doubling within six months, according to Artemis standards), while the proportion of retail funds decreased but their activity increased, resulting in more concentrated yet more active capital, providing a safety cushion for the next round of leverage/derivatives expansion.

Second, the developer retention rate is higher than that of other peer blockchains. According to Electric Capital statistics, the 24-month survival rate (dev commits on GitHub for two consecutive years) is SUI=37% > Aptos 31% > Sei 18%. The key factors are: the object model + Walrus/Seal native SDK reduces the mental cost of "rewriting on-chain structures"; most teams prefer to write their first contract on SUI rather than porting it.

Third, the user structure is bifurcated (DeFi + content entertainment) driving the diversification of on-chain interactions. DeFi contracts account for about 49% of on-chain calls; content applications such as FanTV, RECRD, and Pebble City contribute about 35% of the call volume. Social and consumer applications have not yet truly launched, representing a potential blue ocean. The Web3 transformation of content creation (music, video) has already shown signs on SUI, but it can go further. Especially since SUI has a significant number of users in Southeast Asia, it may be worth considering social products tailored to the habits of users in that region. Localized on-chain short videos and on-chain fan rewards may have a market. As these products grow, they could give rise to businesses such as advertising and data analysis, forming a positive cycle for the ecological economy. Social products have a longer growth period, but once successful, they have strong stickiness.

For example, by March 2025, the amount of BTC locked on the SUI chain surpassed 1,000 BTC; by April, BTC-related assets accounted for 10% of the total TVL on SUI, including forms such as wBTC, LBTC, and stBTC. In other words, there are approximately 250 million dollars worth of Bitcoin already in use on SUI. These Bitcoin assets are fully utilized on SUI: users can mortgage BTC-denominated assets to lending protocols in exchange for stablecoins to achieve "holding coins for interest," or provide BTC/stablecoin liquidity to earn transaction fees. One-stop liquidity protocols like Navi quickly supported BTC as collateral and launched yield aggregation strategies such as "BTC Plus."

Fourth, potential growth curve: RWA and native derivatives have two major gaps. In terms of RWA, Seal/Nautilus provides compliant privacy + verifiable computing, serving as a natural base for issuing bonds and fund shares; collaborations are being tested with Open Market Group (planning to issue rwa yield certificates on SUI) and 21Shares (which has an existing SUI ETP scale of approximately 300M USD) for the tokenization of physical assets/bonds. The opportunities this brings include RWA issuance-end SaaS, compliant identity as a service, on-chain secondary exchanges, and valuation oracles. In terms of native perpetual/options, the current on-chain Perp OI is approximately 20m, with Bluefin accounting for about 70%. The difference between Hyperliquid-style application chains and SUI is "performance vs liquidity aggregation." If SUI decides to implement composable/cross-protocol matching at the consensus layer (like DeepBook 2.0), there is a chance to develop unified derivative infrastructure, with a potential growth space of 10x.

3. Forward-looking layout, SUI Foundation, a trading platform, Mysten Labs, and others become key ecological forces

A prosperous ecosystem relies on the catalysis and empowerment of strategic capital. In the process of the SUI ecosystem evolving from its nascence to rapid emergence, a certain trading platform has played a crucial role. Its investment strategy is not merely a financial bet but is based on a profound understanding of the SUI technological architecture and ecological potential, engaging in forward-looking and systematic layouts that catalyze the prosperity of the SUI ecosystem.

The Sui application ecosystem currently focuses on financial categories (DeFi + BTCFi) as the absolute core, followed by entertainment categories (GameFi/NFT/social), while AI-native tools and derivatives are still in the early stages of development. The real gaps are concentrated in RWA lending and on-chain derivatives: the former is waiting for the implementation of privacy compliance solutions from Seal/Nautilus, while the latter requires stronger matching depth and risk hedging tools.

A certain trading platform is recognized by the market as one of the earliest discoverers and strategic co-builders of the SUI ecosystem. Shortly after the launch of the SUI mainnet, when the ecosystem was still in its early stages, this trading platform, with its keen judgment, decisively invested strategically in several core projects such as a certain DEX, Navi, Momentum, and Haedal. These projects cover decentralized exchanges.