Key Takeaways
- Sui has reclaimed momentum with daily active addresses surpassing 1.7 million, bucking the market trend as other major chains see user declines.
- While Sui’s total value locked (TVL) has dropped from its peak, it remains one of the top 10 chains by capital locked in DeFi protocols.
- The recent launches of Walrus and DeepBook signal a maturation for Sui and its foundational infrastructure.
- With hints of evolving into a decentralised communications network, Sui is positioning itself for a broader role across web3 beyond just finance or gaming.
Introduction
Sui continues to grab headlines and market attention even during this downturn, positioning itself as one of the most active and innovative new Layer one (L1) blockchains. Despite fierce competition, it’s gaining traction through user-friendly features, incentivised ecosystems and growing speculation about its long-term ambitions. So, what do the data and ecosystem activity tell us?
Sui’s Key On-chain Metrics
Daily Active Addresses
Daily active addresses (DAA) provide a glimpse into the level of activity across a blockchain, tracking the number of unique wallet addresses interacting with the network each day. While not a perfect measure of user count – since individuals or entities can operate multiple wallets – it’s still one of the best metrics for gauging consistent engagement.
Sui initially made headlines with an impressive burst to over 1.6 million DAA in September 2024. This surge was driven by targeted ecosystem incentives, strategic partnerships and a growing narrative around next-generation L1s. That momentum eventually stabilised, with activity consolidating around the 400,000 to 600,000 range over the following months.
What’s most exciting for Sui is its recent resilience. Since February 2025, when nearly all other chains have seen user activity decline, Sui has bucked the trend. Notably, Solana dropped from 7 million to 4.3 million DAAs in the same period.
In contrast, Sui has once again increased its DAA count—surpassing its previous high and reaching 1.7 million. This breakout performance suggests that Sui is not only retaining attention but actively growing in a cooling market.
Also of note is that Sonic – which has captured a lot of attention in recent months, largely due to an incentive program – is barely registering on this measurement, with just 42,000 DAAs. This highlights an important distinction in crypto: attention and marketing might generate noise, but they don’t automatically translate into sustained usage.
Total Value Locked
Total value locked (TVL) is one of the clearest indicators of capital confidence on a blockchain. It reflects how much value users are willing to commit across various decentralised applications – often through staking, lending and liquidity provision.
For Sui, TVL paints a different picture. It has declined from a high of $2.3 billion USD to around $1.5 billion USD in recent months. This drop may largely reflect the broader market trend and the decline in SUI’s token price over the same period.
While Sui remains a top L1 chain by TVL, it hasn’t been immune to the current market downtrend, showing that even fast-growing ecosystems are not insulated from broader market pressures.
An interesting comparison is once again Sonic. As stated earlier, it has comparatively few DAAs, but its TVL is now on par with Sui. This signals that Sonic is clearly in a breakout, expansive phase from a TVL perspective. Whether it can sustain that level of locked value, especially without matching user activity, remains to be seen.
It’s a reminder that TVL alone doesn’t capture the full picture of network health.
What’s Being Built on Sui?
Walrus: Decentralised Storage
Walrus is a decentralised data storage protocol designed to provide scalable and efficient on-chain storage solutions. Developed by Mysten Labs, Walrus launched on the Sui mainnet in March 2025, marking a significant milestone in decentralised storage.
The protocol leverages the Sui blockchain’s architecture to offer programmable, interactive and secure data storage. The programmable element of the data storage – allowing data to interact with smart contracts – is what makes Walrus unique. It will be interesting to see how developers use this.
DeepBook: On-chain Trading
DeepBook is Sui’s native on-chain trading engine, designed to function as a central limit order book (CLOB). Unlike protocols such as Uniswap, which uses automated market maker (AMM) models to match buyers and sellers through algorithms, DeepBook allows users to place their own buy and sell orders at specific prices – much like how traditional stock markets operate.
This approach is designed to give traders more control over pricing and can lead to tighter spreads and better efficiency for certain trade types. Arguably, it also makes DeepBook more appealing to institutions or advanced users who are used to the precision and structure of CLOB systems.
What’s Next for Sui? Becoming a Communications Network
In recent months, the Sui Foundation has hinted at expanding beyond being just a high-performance L1 blockchain. One of the more intriguing possibilities is positioning Sui as a decentralised communications network. While the details are still sparse, the idea seems to involve enabling secure, on-chain messaging – potentially between users, apps, and even AI agents.
If this plays out, it would mark a significant evolution in Sui’s utility. Communication is a core function of any digital ecosystem, and decentralising it could unlock a range of new use cases – from encrypted user chats and dApp-to-dApp messaging to automated, trustless interactions between smart contracts and services. It’s early days, but the narrative around Sui shifting into this role could prove to be one of its most important yet.
Conclusion
Sui is shaping as one of the more resilient and ambitious chains that emerged from the recent wave of L1s. It’s growing its user base while others contract, building real infrastructure rather than just hype and hinting at future use cases that could reshape how communication happens on-chain.
With foundational protocols like Walrus and DeepBook now live and speculation around Sui’s potential role as a decentralised messaging layer, the project appears to be entering a new chapter. While challenges remain in terms of sustaining capital and usage, the signals from onchain data and ecosystem developments point toward long-term potential that’s hard to ignore.
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