Sui Overtakes Aptos, Cardano in Value Locked; Sees $310M Inflow in 30 Days

• The total amount of capital locked on Sui has risen from $211 million to $593 million since the turn of the year.

• The SUI token is up by 131% in the same period.

• Sui has now overtaken Aptos, Cardano and Near in terms of capital locked on DeFi protocols.

Layer 1 blockchain Sui has experienced a sharp increase in inflows this month, a spike that has seen it overtake Cardano, Near and Aptos in terms of total value locked (TVL).

The network, which was built by former Meta (META) employees, now has over $593 million in capital locked across various decentralized finance (DeFI) protocols, more than double its total at the turn of the year when it had $211 million, DefiLlama data shows.

Data published by wormholescan.io, which tracks the flow of funds through the cross-chain bridge Wormhole, shows that $310 million had been bridged to Sui from Ethereum in the past 30 days.

Sui is often compared to Aptos as they are both built using Move, a programming language that was originally developed at Meta to power the Diem blockchain.

Sui experienced a turbulent start after it debuted on Binance’s launchpad in May last year. SUI, as its native token, nosedived 68% in the first five months of trading. This came to a crescendo in October when Sui founders were accused of manipulating token supply, claims they quickly dismissed.

However, Sui soon found its stride after a wave of inscription-related activity. First seen on Bitcoin during its recent NFT phase, inscriptions are a way of recording arbitrary data on the blockchain without the use of smart contracts.

On Dec. 22, Sui produced 13.8 million blocks, with transactions per second (TPS) reaching a peak of 6,000. In contrast to other layers 1s, like Ethereum, gas prices during this high traffic phase decreased, according to a Sui blog post. According to Suiexplorer, there are currently 106 validators operating 413 nodes to secure the Sui blockchain.

This buoyed the confidence of developers and investors as both the SUI token price and on-chain TVL increased in the following weeks. The two largest protocols on Sui are Scallop Lend and Navi Protocol, two lending platforms that have both seen TVL quadruple since the turn of the year.

SUI is currently trading at $1.80, having risen by 131% since Jan. 1, outperforming the CoinDesk 20 index, which is up by 10% in the same period.