Sui's TVL increased by 400% in three months, potentially becoming a strong competitor to Ethereum's Layer 1?
In just six months, the number of applications has grown from single digits to nearly a hundred. Why has Sui become even stronger in a bear market?Author: Kasou Kazoku
The Sui public chain has recently demonstrated a strong growth momentum. In just five months since its launch, the number of ecological applications on the Sui public chain has rapidly expanded from fewer than 10 to nearly 100 applications, a remarkable growth rate.
Even more impressive is that Sui's ecological TVL (Total Value Locked) has also reached new heights. According to data from DeFiLlama, from July 17 to October 25 of this year, Sui's TVL skyrocketed from $13.08 million to $65.24 million in just three months, an astonishing increase of 398.7%.
At the same time, business data such as the number of daily trading addresses and daily transaction counts on the Sui public chain also show a continuous growth trend.
According to data from the official Sui website, there are currently 85 different types of applications on the platform, with infrastructure, gaming, and DeFi applications being the most prominent, laying a solid foundation for Sui's development.
The birth of the Sui public chain stems from a series of remarkable backgrounds and innovative forces. Let us explore the origins of Sui and understand how this new Layer 1 public chain came into being.
Introduction to the Sui Team and Funding Background
Mysten Labs, the creator of Sui, was founded in 2021 by former Novi project lead Evan Cheng, Adeniyi Abiodun, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, and Kostas Chalkias. These founders have extensive research and product experience across various fields, including software language compilers, static analysis (programming security), distributed systems, cryptography, and cloud computing, having worked at renowned companies such as Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, R3, and Facebook.
Notably, co-founder Evan Cheng was awarded the ACM Software System Award for designing LLVM (the technology used in most Apple and Google devices), which is a remarkable achievement.
During the birth of Sui, funding played a crucial supporting role. Mysten Labs conducted two rounds of financing, raising $36 million in Series A, led by a16z, with participation from Redpoint, Lightspeed, Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, and others. In the Series B round, Mysten successfully raised $300 million at a valuation of approximately $2 billion, led by FTX Ventures, with participation from a16z, Jump Crypto, Binance Labs, and others.
It is important to note that these funding rounds by Mysten Labs were limited to equity sales and did not involve the provision of SUI tokens. Additionally, the Sui Foundation, as an independent foundation, aims to build the Sui community and support developers creating products on Sui.
Finally, the Sui public chain officially launched on May 3, 2023, marking the emergence of this innovative Layer 1 public chain in the crypto space, becoming a global focal point. From its founding background to funding support, the Sui public chain has taken a solid step forward, paving the way for the future development of Layer 1. In the following sections, we will delve into how Sui is driving innovation in blockchain gaming and the rise of DeFi within its ecosystem.
With Multiple Core Advantages, Sui's Gaming Underlying Performance is Becoming Stronger
The Sui public chain is actively entering the crypto gaming field, believing that to build engaging and interesting crypto games, the underlying blockchain must possess five key attributes, which include:
- Comprehensive functionality:
Sui adopts an object-oriented architecture, using objects as the basic unit of data storage instead of the traditional account model. This means developers can define, create, and manage programmable objects that represent user-level assets. Each object has different attributes, including ownership, and its value can be updated based on the control logic of the smart contract that created it. Notably, while smart contracts create these objects, they do not store them; instead, the objects and their metadata are stored directly on-chain. This architecture provides greater flexibility and programmability for digital assets in games.
- Dynamic and nested assets:
Sui's object-oriented data model endows digital assets with two unique properties: the ability to evolve during gameplay without creating new contracts (dynamic assets) and the ability to own other assets (nested assets). Dynamic assets can develop and evolve during gameplay without requiring system upgrades or modifications. All assets can retain their rich history, meaning the value and history of in-game items can be effectively recorded and managed.
- Sui Kiosk: Customizable embedded trading strategies:
One of Sui's original features is the Sui Kiosk, which allows creators to set the trading terms for their assets. These terms include not only royalty payments but also various aspects related to sharing, selling, and managing assets, allowing creators to customize according to their needs, enabling better management of their digital assets.
- Native Web3 abstraction features:
Sui recognizes that players do not want to become Web3 experts to participate in great games. Therefore, Sui provides native Web3 abstraction features, such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions, to simplify the gaming experience, allowing players to easily participate. Users can create accounts using existing web credentials from companies like Google and Twitch, while game studios can pay any gas fees related to game transactions without requiring users to understand blockchain knowledge.
- Scalability, speed, and cost predictability:
The Sui public chain stands out for its exceptional performance, being one of the fastest chains. Its finality reaches sub-second levels, capable of processing nearly 300,000 transactions per second, meaning games can operate at the speed desired by players. Additionally, Sui's horizontal scaling combined with its unique gas pricing mechanism allows the Sui network to meet demand without increasing gas fees. These low and predictable costs enable game studios to better plan and manage their infrastructure costs.
In the first 90 days after the Sui mainnet launch, even with a surge in transactions, gas fees remained stable, providing a solid foundation for the sustainable development of crypto gaming. Sui's efforts open up new possibilities for innovation in blockchain gaming, driving the widespread application of blockchain technology in the gaming field. As Sui continues to develop, we can expect to see more innovative crypto gaming applications emerge.
TVL Continues to Grow, Sui's Future Potential Widely Recognized
In the past three months, the Sui public chain has experienced rapid growth in DeFi activities, with Total Value Locked (TVL) increasing by 341% and transaction volume growing by 229%. This magnificent growth marks an important milestone for the Sui public chain, showcasing the practicality it offers to third-party developers in its DeFi ecosystem and its ability to support millions of users in alternative financial services.
The Sui public chain provides services to DeFi protocols with its unique technical features, which are key to attracting users. First, it has parallel processing capabilities, meaning users can expect their transactions to reach finality in the shortest time possible, close to real-time market conditions. Second, the Sui public chain is characterized by low gas fees, meaning users only need to pay a minimal amount of tokens for transactions without worrying about high fees.
These technical advantages have attracted a large number of developers to choose Sui for developing their DeFi protocols, including decentralized exchanges (DEXes), lending platforms, and liquidity provision, among others. Within six months of the Sui mainnet launch, DeFi protocols have flourished on Sui, providing users with various options to participate in DeFi.
Additionally, the Sui Foundation has supported DeFi developers through a robust grant program since the mainnet launch, which is reflected in the data. Over time, transaction volumes on Sui have further increased, providing a solid foundation for the prosperity of the Sui ecosystem.
The goal of the Sui public chain is to make developers recognize its potential and promote the development of DeFi in the Sui ecosystem in multiple ways. The team emphasizes that the long-term commitment to DeFi goes beyond token trading. Sui also has the potential to provide secure, stable, and efficient solutions for retail financial services such as banking, deposit accounts, payments, credit, and insurance, thereby reducing costs and providing a better user experience. Furthermore, institutions can leverage the Sui public chain for asset tokenization, trading, foreign exchange operations, and many other financial applications, creating limitless possibilities.
The rise of the Sui network injects new vitality into the DeFi space and provides a solid foundation for broader financial innovation, making us look forward to the future.
Sui is Expected to Stand Out Among Layer 1 Public Chains and Become Industry Infrastructure
The Sui public chain, as a Layer 1 public chain redesigned and built from first principles, has become a rising star in the digital asset industry. Its mission is to provide creators and developers with a development platform that can support applications and services for the next billion users in Web3.
In the future, the digital asset industry will become mainstream, and in this new era, developers and consumers will seek flexibility and security. They will look for a smart contract platform that can offer them new use cases and seamless experiences. Sui is making significant strides in this direction.
Sui's success will depend on its continuous technological innovation and ecosystem expansion. If it can maintain this momentum, Sui is expected to stand out among many Layer 1 public chains and become one of the leaders in the future digital asset industry. We look forward to seeing Sui create more exciting stories as it continues to develop and contribute more possibilities for the future of Web3.
