Sui Lands in DeFi Top 10, Surpasses Aptos and Cardano in Locked Value

Layer 1 blockchain Sui has witnessed a remarkable surge in inflows, pushing it to surpass industry heavyweights like Cardano, Near, and Aptos in terms of Total Value Locked (TVL).

Built by former Meta (META) employees, Sui now boasts over $593 million in locked capital across various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, as per data from DefiLlama.

This marks a major increase from its $211 million TVL at the start of the year, showing its rapid growth trajectory.

Data from wormholescan.io, a platform tracking fund flows through the cross-chain bridge Wormhole, reveals that Sui has bridged an impressive $310 million from Ethereum over the past 30 days alone.

Sui, often likened to Aptos due to their shared use of Move, a programming language initially developed at Meta for the Diem blockchain, encountered a loud beginning following its debut on Binance's launchpad in May last year.

Despite its native token, SUI, experiencing a 68% nosedive in its first five months of trading, allegations of token supply manipulation against Sui founders in October were quickly refuted.

However, Sui's fortunes took a turn following a surge in inscription-related activities, reminiscent of Bitcoin's recent NFT phase. Inscriptions, a method of recording arbitrary data on the blockchain without smart contracts, gained traction. According to CoinDesk, on December 22, Sui recorded 13.8 million blocks, with transactions per second (TPS) peaking at 6,000. Notably, gas prices during this high-traffic period decreased, in contrast to other Layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum, according to a Sui blog post. Presently, Sui boasts 106 validators operating 413 nodes to ensure the security of its blockchain, as reported by Suiexplorer.

This resurgence boosts confidence among developers and investors, resulting in a surge in both the SUI token price and on-chain TVL in subsequent weeks. The two leading protocols on Sui, Scallop Lend and Navi Protocol, have witnessed a quadruple increase in TVL since the beginning of the year.

Trading at $1.80, SUI has surged by 131% since January 1, outpacing the CoinDesk 20 index, which saw a modest 10% increase over the same period.