Sui's Fast Speed Could Make It A "Solana-Killer"

Summary Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain with a highly rated underlying technology that utilizes the MOVE programming language. Its object-centered execution and a parallelized consensus mechanism, allows rapid execution and settlement. Sui’s Total Value Locked (TVL) peaked at $2.6Bn on 10/2025 and is a Top-10 blockchain. While Sui has high ratings for speed, the project has issues with tokenomics, centralization and creditability. Thesis It’s been a while since I’ve written about a crypto project as the market remains inefficient, and so well-deserving projects perform the same and sometimes worse than MEME-coins. There have been as many as 24,000 crypto projects and over 50% have failed. However, the “MOVE-based” programming language projects such as Aptos (APT-USD) and the subject of today’s discussion, SUI (SUI-USD) peaked my interest when Meta ( META ) released them into the wild. Further, there have been several articles postulating the “Solana killer” narrative for Sui. This article begins with a top-down view of the overall crypto market, my crypto-project Scorecard as well as a discussion of Sui’s best & worst features. Where are we in the Crypto Cycle ? Given the completion of the Bitcoin four-year cycle and lack of an “Altcoin-season” many have given up on crypto. Adding fuel to the fire, I proposed that Altcoins are really just like Call Options, meaning that they trend towards zero. However, I believe if global M2 growth surpasses 10%, there will be renewed interest in Altcoins. Presently, M2 growth is near 10% - all we need is an excuse for the Fed to print money. My guess is that “excuse” will come in the form of weak labor reports. What I’m saying is, “ Don’t give up on Crypto .” BGeometrics Crypto Project Scorecard I’ve created a crypto Scorecard in which I’ve “normalized” the data and rated blockchains (including L1 projects). This is an “easier said than done” exercise given that each project is unique and some are younger than others. Most projects are rated about 7 (the highest rating is 10) but some have rated below 6 such as Terra (remember Luna ?) Given all the good things I heard about Sui, I expected it would have a high rating, but the rating was below-average especially compared with Solana. Ethereum had the highest rating (~ 8) as well as NEAR Protocol – the latter is now focused on AI Agents. I prefer projects that can hit that “Redline” in the bar-chart. The table below shows factors that contributed to the Scorecard (Information sources: Suiscan, Defi-Llama, Electric Capital). Author's creation Author's creation Background Sui was founded in 2021 by former Diem (fka Libra) project developers that worked at Meta/Facebook. Facebook planted the seeds of the project back in 2018, but it was shut-down following regulatory pushback. Sui went live (i.e., Mainnet) in 2023. ICO token distribution is in the chart below: Sui Foundation Funding: Sui is well funded ($356MM plus a secondary sale of $49MM to a digital asset treasury) by some of the biggest names in the space such as A16Z which led the Series A round. FTX led ($101MM) the Series B, of which Mysten Labs (the for-profit company behind Sui) bought back during FTX’s bankruptcy. Crunchbase, Sui Foundation External Ratings TokenInsight rates Sui “A” with a Stable outlook. Its rating is supported by its Roadmap, Technology, Team and Token Economics (which I disagree with). TokenInsight The Good As I said earlier, I’ve been reticent to rate or recommend any chain given that the Ethereum ( ETH-USD ) ecosystem is “good enough” to attract institutions. What attracted me to Sui was its rapid TVL (Total Value Locked) growth and technology. Just to keep things simple, I would describe it as a “modular-like” chain (but in fact, it’s monolithic ) that uses the power of the MOVE programming language and related object-centered execution (and a parallelized consensus mechanism) to rapidly execute and settle transactions. Some people measure speed not only in how fast the blockchain can transact, but how rapidly transactions can settle. Sui does both, which is epitomized by its 390 millisecond super-fast finality . While I don’t want to bore you with the details, essentially Sui acts like a sharded chain (so speed increases as new chains are created) and speed is optimized by only requiring consensus for complex transactions (e.g., smart-contracts) while simple token transfers are processed quickly and in parallel without needing full consensus. Sui’s Max Theoretical TPS is considered amongst the fastest of all chains (see below). Chainspect Developers and Dapp companies have taken notice. There are many full-time developers working on the Sui ecosystem and the blockchain has many more Dapps than I’ve seen for similarly aged blockchains. While Sui’s blockchain is very game-oriented, its Defi business is also strong and has already outperformed most older chains. The pie-chart below shows Sui’s market share (5.5%) of total TVL (excluding the 500lb gorilla of Ethereum). Sui’s sibling rival, Aptos, also has a fairly high TVL share (at 2.42%). DefiLlama The table below shows that Sui was able to reach the “Big leagues” as a Top 10 Defi chain. While its TVL is down sharply from its peak, Sui’s showing that it’s able to rebound (see 7D TVL change below). DefiLlama Ecosystem Metrics: There are 100 projects within its ecosystem, many consumer oriented - a list can be found here. There are over 236MM total accounts (see chart). Sui has shown strong growth since its launch, reminiscing that of Solana’s early days. Despite all the projects and large TVL, “Defi-diversity” (the number of Dapps required to reach 90% of total TVL) is very low at 4, and even adjusting for “double-counting”, remains low. For comparison, Solana has a Diversity score of 18-20 (see bar-chart). Sui-scan Messari The Bad The other strong area for Sui is gaming, which is best exemplified by the introduction of the SuiPlay0X1 mobile hardware gaming device on 9/2024. Users can play Web3 (blockchain) games with native wallet support. This device reminds me of the Solana Saga phone, which if you recall wasn’t off to a good start until they “airdropped” tokens to purchasers. Echoing that, the SuiPlay had 10k presales (selling out) as they too gave NFT rewards for early buyers. Despite selling-out, I read several mixed reviews and outright complaints about SuiPlay ranging from issues with bugs , limited compatibility with mainstream (Web2) games, unexpected import duties and complaints about bot-like comments on social posts hyping up SuiPlay (sources: X , Reddit ). Note that Sui’s number of transactions , which averaged under 10MM/day in 2024 jumped to 300MM/day in 11/2024 but then fell back to under 14MM/day since. This indicates that the high transaction activity was not secular in nature. The Ugly There are three weaknesses to Sui in my view: 1) the chain is centralized, 2) the token is inflationary and 3) the chain is surrounded by credibility issues. Let’s take them one by one. The chain is centralized overall, depending on what elements (e.g., staking requirements, distribution, number of validators, validator clients) you’re examining. The chart below shows that Sui’s validator total (126) is lower (i.e., centralized) compared to most chains. This is due to Sui’s young age and the high amount (30 million Sui coins) required to be a validator. Chainspect Its Nakamoto coefficient range is 13-19. This isn’t a terribly “bad” number, but I’m more concerned that governance is off-chain and that during the Sui ICO, Mysten Labs received 10% of the coins while the “Community” received 50%. Sui Foundation controls those community coins so it can influence the chain . Chainspect Tokenomics: Superficially, Sui has good Token economics since it has a Max-Supply Limit, it’s inflation rate from Staking issuance is below 0.5% (see page 7) and since it burns a portion of gas fees. However, its Vesting Schedule, while improving, remains dilutive. For example, there are just 3.7Bn coins in circulation compared to the 10Bn supply limit. Hence, actual inflation is in the double-digits and declines towards mid-single-digits by 2032 as tokens unlock. (Visually, you can see the inflation by the steepness of the curve in the early years.) Messari How can I get constructive on Sui ? Other than those creditability cited above, Sui has the right ingredients for success. I rate Sui “ Hold ” given its best-in-class underlying technology, its ability to attract developers and increase TVL. I have a difficult time rating Sui a Buy given the credibility issues and weak Tokenomics. In conclusion, “Sui, you’re great, but you’re no Solana as you aren’t much faster, decentralized, etc...than Solana”