Sui’s Breakout Moment: What Sets this Layer-1 Apart in 2025

• Over the past twelve months, the SUI token has surged approximately 390%, cementing Sui’s position as one of the top-performing Layer‑1s this cycle, with DeFi total value locked (TVL) climbing above $2.2 billion. 

• Sui’s object-based model allows parallel transaction execution while its Mysticeti consensus delivers sub-second finality and industry-leading low latency. 

• Sui is aiming to solve crypto’s user experience (UX) problem, reducing friction that has so far deterred mainstream adoption.  

• With consistent uptick in onchain activity and protocol revenues, SUI’s price rally is based by solid fundamental demand for its applications onchain. 

• By enabling a web2-like experience for users, Sui is well positioned to very well be the next step in Layer-1 blockchain evolution and the SUI token offers exposure to this growth potential. 

Sui has become one of the top Layer-1 (L1) blockchains this crypto market cycle, drawing steady interest from developers, investors and institutions. In a crowded L1 landscape, it has managed to stand out and shine through. The network was built from the ground up using the Move programming language and offers a fresh take on blockchain infrastructure. Its design supports fast, low-latency applications. In this edition of The Bridge, we look at how Sui is built for scale and why it could be the next key player in the Layer-1 space. 

Bitcoin first pioneered decentralised, permissionless peer-to-peer transfers of value. Ethereum built on this by introducing a permissionless, decentralised world computer. Solana then emerged with a focus on a single high-performance base layer with their North Star of becoming Nasdaq on the Blockchain, with unified liquidity for traders. Each of them tackled the limitations of their predecessors.  

One of Sui’s core missions is to solve the crypto user interface (UI) problem by making onchain interactions as seamless and familiar as using traditional apps. In other words, Sui is built to feel like web2 in terms of speed and ease of use, but with the trustless and open properties of web3.   

Perhaps Sui’s most novel innovation is its adoption of an object-based model as opposed to the traditional account-based blockchain model. On account-based chains (like Ethereum or Solana), assets are essentially entries in a smart contract’s ledger (like rows in a global spreadsheet). This creates a bottleneck where transactions must be globally ordered sequentially. Sui breaks free from this by treating each asset or coin as an independent object with its own state. Every user’s token or NFT on Sui exists as discrete objects owned by that user’s address, rather than just a balance field within a contract.  

The design’s biggest benefit is parallel transaction execution. Independent transactions (those involving different objects) can be processed simultaneously without waiting on each other. Because transfers update the ownership of individual objects and not a global ledger, Sui validators only need to lock and update the specific objects involved, not pause the entire chain state. The result is true parallelism. For example, if a thousand people send tokens at once, Ethereum or Solana must sequence these one-by-one to avoid double-spending, but Sui can process many of them (those which are not interdependent) in parallel. This massively improves throughput and latency during periods of high demand.  

Sui’s Mysticeti consensus mechanism delivers industry-leading low latency, down to about 390 milliseconds. This is an 80% reduction in latency compared to Sui’s earlier consensus, making it arguably the fastest confirmation layer in blockchain today. In practice, Sui now achieves sub-second transaction finality. For perspective, Solana’s time-to-finality is around five seconds, Ethereum’s is over a minute, and very few new chains sometimes have sub-second finality. Sui’s ability to finalize transactions almost instantly gives it a significant advantage for use cases like high-frequency trading, gaming or payments where latency is critical. 

Alongside speed, Sui’s consensus also prioritises security. It remains a decentralised, Byzantine Fault Tolerant proof-of-stake (PoS) system. The network currently has 117 validators securing it. The network’s validators have staked over $29.81 billion in SUI tokens (75.47% of total circulating market cap) to secure the network. Sui’s design choice has been to slightly favour performance (with a higher hardware requirement per validator for greater throughput) over maximum decentralisation at this early stage. This trade-off has yielded tangible performance benefits (leading to the speeds noted above), but over time the team expects to further decentralise as the technology matures. 

One of the most UX-centric innovations is zkLogin, which allows users to create or access a Sui wallet using their existing web2 credentials (like Google and Meta logins). Under the hood, zkLogin uses zero knowledge proofs to authenticate a user’s credentials without revealing them onchain. This is a highly appreciative move bringing familiar one-click sign-ins for millions of users into Sui dApps (no browser extension or seed phrase needed). This removes one of the biggest friction points in crypto (complex wallet setup) while preserving privacy and security. Developers can integrate zkLogin to onboard users with zero crypto-specific setup, significantly lowering the barrier to entry onchain.  

Sponsored transactions are another powerful tool on Sui that allows developers or apps to cover gas fees on behalf of users, letting people interact without needing SUI in their wallets. Gas fee payment has long been a point of friction for mainstream entering crypto. This solves for the same.  

Additionally, much like Ethereum’s ENS, the Sui Name Service allows users to register human-readable domain names (e.g. alice.sui) that map to their wallet addresses. Ika is another upcoming addition to Sui’s ecosystem. Ika is a protocol that lets Sui smart contracts control assets on other chains via a secure multi-party computation (MPC) network. In essence, the protocol will enable trading or utilising assets like BTC, ETH or XRP on Sui without using traditional token bridges or wrapped tokens. 

Sui’s development is led by Mysten Labs, the team of engineers who were key contributors to Meta’s Diem and Novi blockchain projects. Mysten’s founders bring deep expertise in distributed systems and cryptography. For instance, CEO Evan Cheng was Director of Engineering at Diem while its CTO Sam Blackshear created the Move programming language at Meta. Other co-founders include experts who led product for Meta’s crypto efforts and industry-renowned cryptographers. 

This pedigree is reflected in Sui’s design. It was built with global scale in mind from day one, carrying forward the mission they had at Facebook to support billions of users. Mysten Labs has over a hundred team members working on Sui. Unlike many crypto projects that take a hands-off or purely theoretical approach, Mysten actively translates their research into practical products. This gives Sui a strong execution advantage. 

Sui is also one of the most well-funded L1s in the market. Mysten Labs has raised over $336 million. Backers include leading names in crypto venture capital such as a16z, Lightspeed, Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto and Electric Capital. This level of funding has allowed Sui to push hard on research and development. The investor lineup reflects strong conviction in the project’s technical foundation and long-term relevance. 

Institutional interest in Sui has also started to materialise. In late 2024, Sui partnered with Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, the blockchain arm of the $1.5 trillion asset manager. Franklin Templeton has launched tokenised funds on other networks like Polygon and Base. Their decision to support builders in the Sui ecosystem and explore use cases on Sui indicates belief in its infrastructure and suitability for real-world financial applications. 

When both top crypto investors and established financial institutions show up early, it signals that the project has managed to earn attention across the board. 

Among the many new L1s launched this cycle, Sui has managed to stand out and capture significant mindshare. Having launched on mainnet just over two years ago, SUI has already breached into the top 15 in coin market capitalisation rankings.  

Figure 1: SUI has rallied more than 390% over the past one year. 

Source: AMINA Bank, Glassnode 

It has even outpaced Bitcoin (+100.08%), ETH (-5.42%), SOL (13.35%) and the broader L1 sector (75.24%) during this time. This strong market showing reflects growing investor interest in SUI. 

Figure 2: SUI has outperformed its peers over the past one year. 

Source: AMINA Bank, Messari 

Sui’s price rally is also backed by solid onchain growth. DeFi activity has exploded, with total value locked rising 314% in the same period. Stablecoin usage is another standout. The stablecoin market cap on Sui currently is at $6.01 billion with daily transfer volumes regularly crossing $2.5 billion.  

Figure 3: DeFi TVL on Sui has grown 314% while total stablecoin transfer volumes have consistently stayed above $2.5 billion. 

Source: AMINA Bank, Artemis Terminal 

At the time of publication, Suilend Protocol leads Sui’s DeFi ecosystem with over $726 million in TVL. Closely behind is NAVI Protocol (another lending marketplace) at $682 million. Haedal, the network’s top liquid staking platform, holds third place with $208 million. Bluefin, a decentralised exchange (DEX), ranks fourth with $195 million, followed by Momentum DEX with $135 million in TVL. Daily active addresses on the chain are up 83% and transactions have jumped 77.5% over the past year. Unlike many chains that struggle to monetise activity, Sui is generating real revenue. Network fees are up 268% and protocol revenue has soared 572%. 

Figure 4: Daily active addresses are up 83% and chain fees are up 268% over the past one year. 

Source: AMINA Bank, Artemis 

In short, Sui has quickly caught attention due to a combination of market outperformance, strong user and developer growth metrics, and a narrative that it could be the blockchain to finally bring a billion users on-chain. Investors see Sui as a promising next-generation platform with the right ingredients to break into mainstream adoption. 

Sui represents a bold attempt to fulfill the original promise of L1 tech: bringing millions onchain by offering an experience as good as modern internet services. Its architecture and performance speed give it a technical edge in supporting a plethora of use cases. And just as importantly, Sui pairs this tech with a focus on user-friendly design. The founding team’s pedigree and the substantial funding/partnerships behind Sui provide confidence that this is a serious, long-term project with the resources to execute. 

It’s important to note that Sui is still early in its lifecycle and thus carries the risks of any young network. Over half of its token supply will only unlock in coming years, and it faces an uphill battle in converting blockchain skeptics and competing with entrenched platforms. However, its early accomplishments suggest that the ingredients for success are there: differentiated technology and a vision centered on real-world utility.  

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