SUI Public Chain: From High-Performance Chain to Programmable Internet Infrastructure

With the continuous evolution of Web3 technology, smart contract languages are gradually migrating from the Ethereum-dominated Solidity to the more secure and resource-abstract capable Move language. Move was originally developed by Meta for the Diem project and features resources as first-class citizens and formal verification friendliness, making it an important language option for the underlying architecture of the next generation of public blockchains.

In this context, Aptos and SUI become the dual core representatives of the Move ecosystem. Aptos is launched by the original Diem core team, continuing the native Move technology stack, emphasizing stability, security, and modular architecture. SUI, built by Mysten Labs, inherits the Move security model while introducing object-oriented data structures and parallel execution mechanisms, forming a SUI Move branch with significant performance breakthroughs and innovative development paradigms, restructuring on-chain resource management and transaction execution models. SUI is a Layer 1 that reconstructs the smart contract operating mechanism and on-chain resource management from first principles, not only pursuing high TPS but also rewriting the operational method of the blockchain. This makes SUI not just high-performance but also paradigm-leading, serving as the technical foundation for complex on-chain interactions and large-scale Web3 applications.

1. Break out of the encirclement and reshape the public chain landscape

After Solana enters the Firedancer era, its performance curve may maintain a lead, but it still adheres to the "single-chain high-frequency trading" paradigm. SUI attempts to respond to demands beyond the performance arms race with horizontal stacking + end-to-end privacy/storage. This represents a significant difference from Aptos (also using Move, but still a one-dimensional scaling) or Sei (specialized chain with concentrated liquidity depth). For investment institutions, this means:

• If you value high TPS + continuous transaction fees, Solana and dedicated chains may yield faster returns.
• If you are interested in "new type applications" and horizontal interface control, the alpha of SUI comes from the unsaturated SaaS/privacy/offline track.
• Aptos and SUI have a high overlap in DeFi and BTCFi, and we must be cautious of competition within the track.

Compared to Solana: SUI uses the more secure Move language, avoiding the vulnerabilities caused by Solana's Rust+Sealevel parallel processing. It also has lower hardware requirements and costs for validation nodes, which is beneficial for decentralization. In terms of performance, both are comparable, with Solana having slightly higher TPS and SUI having lower confirmation latency. In terms of ecosystem, Solana has more projects and users, focusing on complex DeFi, while SUI is growing faster and once had user activity levels that nearly matched Solana's, achieving differentiation through new fields like BTCFi and LSD. In the future, both may coexist, with Solana leaning towards a crypto native ecosystem and SUI focusing more on Web2 penetration and gaming social.

Comparison with Aptos: Aptos and SUI both originate from Libra/Diem, with Aptos launching first and having once received the "first Move chain" halo and high valuation. Over the past year, Aptos's ecosystem has developed slowly, with user and developer activity lower than that of SUI. Reasons include: Aptos adopts a complex Block-STM parallelism, and its performance significantly declines under high concurrency, while SUI's object model is more efficient; Aptos positions itself as a robust financial infrastructure, focusing largely on DeFi and NFTs, with a style similar to Ethereum clones; SUI attempts a diverse narrative, growing users rapidly, but with higher risks. In terms of incentives, Aptos has had airdrops but lacks sustained incentives, whereas SUI, despite having no airdrop, has strong support from the foundation, with monthly active addresses and on-chain transaction volume both surpassing Aptos.

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 downtime, showing high short-term popularity but lacking sustained TVL and user growth, with limited ecological development. Its positioning is too narrow, relying on liquidity mining, making it difficult to form a complete ecosystem. In contrast, SUI follows a general-purpose L1 route, supporting diverse applications and being more resilient to risks. Sei's cross-chain compatibility and language advantages are inferior to SUI, making it unlikely to threaten SUI in the short term.

Comparing Ethereum L2: The Ethereum L2 ecosystem is thriving, with TVL exceeding $2 billion. The advantages of SUI lie in ultra-low latency and high concurrency, which Rollup finds difficult to match, and with low Gas fees, it is suitable for high TPS games and other applications. On the other hand, 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, but in the short term, it depends on who can better meet application needs.

2. Striding Forward, Ecological Data Shines

Since the launch of the SUI mainnet 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. In the second half of 2024, the average monthly active addresses on SUI was about 10 million; however, starting from mid-February 2025, this metric experienced a dramatic leap, steadily exceeding 40 million by mid-April, with the monthly active users increasing more than four times. In terms of new users, a "turning point" occurred at the end of 2024, with the average number of new wallet addresses per day rising from 150,000 to a sustained level of over 1 million thereafter.

As of November 2024, approximately $944.8 million has been bridge into SUI. By mid-2025, the total locked amount of SUI cross-chain (bridged TVL) is about $2.55 billion. In mid-April 2025, the market value of SUI stablecoins reached a historical high of over $800 million. In the composition of stablecoins, the market value of USDC has consistently accounted for more than 60%. USDT was also issued on SUI at the end of 2024, maintaining a certain level of activity.

Although it still lags behind Solana in terms of throughput, SUI has completely covered high-frequency scenarios such as on-chain order book DEX, real-time PvP, and social interactions. Additionally, due to fast finality + DAG parallel execution, it naturally fits into the lanes for micropayments, in-game asset exchanges, and social "likes/comments" type writes. With the subsequent upgrade targeting >400,000 TPS for Mahi-Mahi, SUI is continuously solidifying its scalability moat. However, the 150 min downtime event on 2024-11-21 serves as a warning that the stability of the core protocol under high concurrency boundary conditions still requires ongoing verification.

Currently, the SUI ecosystem data is very impressive:

1. The resilience of the capital structure is taking shape. The steady state TVL in Q2 2025 is approximately 1.6 to 1.8 billion USD, with stablecoins + LSD accounting for about 55%, and it can be retained even without incentive subsidies. The proportion of institutional addresses holding has increased from 6% to 14%. Although the proportion of retail funds has decreased, their activity level has risen, indicating that funds are more concentrated but more active.

2. The developer retention rate is higher than that of other public chains of the same age. The 24-month retention rate (dev continuously commits on GitHub for two years) SUI = 37% > Aptos 31% > Sei 18%.

3. The user structure is bimodal (DeFi + content entertainment), driving the diversification of on-chain interactions. DeFi contracts account for about 49% of on-chain calls; content applications like FanTV, RECRD, and Pebble City contribute approximately 35% of the call volume.

4. BTC assets are fully utilized on SUI: By April 2025, BTC-type assets will account for 10% of the total TVL of SUI, covering forms such as wBTC, LBTC, stBTC, etc.

5. The two major gaps to be filled are RWA and native derivatives. In terms of RWA, Seal/Nautilus provides compliant privacy + verifiable computation, which is a natural foundation for issuing bonds and fund shares. Regarding native perpetual/options, the current on-chain Perp OI is about 20m, with Bluefin accounting for approximately 70%.

3. Forward-looking Layout, SUI Foundation, OKX Ventures, Mysten Labs, etc. Become Key Ecological Forces

In the process of the SUI ecosystem's emergence and rapid rise, OKX Ventures has played a crucial role. Its investment strategy is not just a simple financial bet, but rather a forward-looking and systematic layout based on a deep understanding of the SUI technological architecture and ecological potential, which has catalyzed the prosperity of the SUI ecosystem.

Not long after OKX Ventures launched on the SUI mainnet, when the ecosystem was still in its early stages, it strategically invested in several core projects such as Cetus, Navi, Momentum, and Haedal. These projects cover key tracks in the DeFi field, including decentralized exchanges (DEX), lending, and liquid staking (LST), laying a solid foundation for the subsequent financial ecosystem explosion of SUI.

The investments of OKX Ventures are not isolated "points", but rather connect to form a "plane", creating a powerful ecological synergy. The DEXs they invest in provide a clearing place for lending protocols, while lending and LST protocols create new sources of assets and liquidity for the DEXs, collectively building a self-reinforcing DeFi closed loop.

At the same time, the investments made by the SUI Foundation and Mysten Labs at the infrastructure layer have established deep competitive barriers for the ecosystem. Mysten has raised over $300 million cumulatively for SUI development from 2023 to 2024. A significant portion of these funds has been directed towards the research and development of "thick infrastructure" projects such as Walrus, Seal, and Nautilus. The richness of the infrastructure also brings technical stickiness within the ecosystem: once developers become accustomed to and reliant on the unique services provided by SUI, their willingness to migrate to other chains will decrease, as other platforms may lack equivalent functionalities or require rebuilding.

4. Value Positioning, from "Fastest L1" to "Programmable Internet Stack"

In the past year, the public has referred to Sui as "a high-performance parallel chain." However, at the latest event, Mysten Labs co-founder Evan Cheng provided a statement that is clearly more ambitious: "Blockchain is not just trading; Sui is a global coordination layer that weaves compute, liquidity, and data into the programmable foundation of the next generation of the Internet."

The team aims to integrate traditional internet components (computing power, storage, identity, liquidity, privacy computing) into a single native protocol stack, allowing each layer to be used on demand by external applications. Six components (Sui mainnet, DeepBook, SuiNS, Walrus, Seal, Nautilus) are already operational on the mainnet or public testnets, all utilizing open licenses or on-chain governance for source code management. They provide a new path: the true differentiation of Sui lies not in single-point TPS, but in "horizontal combination".

Based on the above capabilities, SUI has opened multiple growth directions:

1. Migration of Web2 SaaS: The team listed over 30 Web2 services such as Dropbox, GitHub, eBay, and YouTube as potential cases that may be "rebuilt on top of Sui's six layers" in the future.

2. Offline Networks and Extreme Scenarios: The Sui team is testing non-IP networks such as SMS, LoRa, HAM, satellite, and underwater acoustics, and is attempting to package transactions as "offline shards," targeting weak network scenarios such as India, Southeast Asia, and post-disaster relief.

3. AI Verifiable: Sui focuses on enabling on-chain auditability of AI weights, inference logs, and data sources through Seal + Nautilus.

In terms of technological progress, the Sui ecosystem is continuously improving. There have been breakthroughs in basic consensus, protocol upgrades, development experience, and user tools. The protocol supports dynamic version control and on-chain/off-chain hot updates, allowing for seamless upgrades in multiple rounds, reducing hard forks, and improving stability. Mysticeti introduces DAG asynchronous pipelines, achieving sub-second finality and 12,000 TPS throughput capacity; the Move language introduces generic specialization, macro expansion, and debugging tools, greatly enhancing development efficiency; the wallet integrates deeply with Phantom, Slush, and others, optimizing user interaction experience and asset security.

In terms of ecological components, the Sui ecosystem has built a full-stack architecture covering storage, encryption, and privacy computing through underlying protocols such as Walrus, Seal, and Nautilus, significantly improving on-chain and off-chain data processing efficiency and data sovereignty.

In terms of security governance, Sui has also demonstrated a rare ability for rapid response. Following the Cetus theft incident, Sui coordinated with validation nodes to freeze the hacker's address through an on-chain governance mechanism, recovering $162 million in assets, and achieving "keyless transfer" for the first time. The foundation, in collaboration with the project party, provided a $30 million loan, combining the recovered funds with a gradual token release compensation mechanism, resulting in a recovery rate of 85%-99% for affected users.

What this indicates is that SUI is shifting its narrative from being the "fastest L1" high-performance chain to a higher positioning of the "programmable internet stack."