Current Status of Sui Ecosystem and Token Release Analysis

Sui has been online for over 40 days, and as one of the representative projects of the Move-based public chains, its development direction is different from that of Ethereum L2. Since the project went live, it has faced continuous controversy, especially regarding the Token issuance method and release model. Some are worried that it will repeat the mistakes of ICP, while others believe it may replicate the success of new public chains in 2021.

So, how is the ecological development of Sui? What is the recent token release and demand like?

1. On-chain Data Analysis

1. TVL ( Total Locked Value )

As of June 13, Sui's TVL was $15.22 million, with DEX Cetus accounting for over 60%. Among all public chains and Layer 2 networks, Sui ranks 54th in TVL. The peak TVL once reached $36.01 million and has now fallen by over 50%.

In comparison, another Move ecosystem representative project, Aptos, currently has a TVL of $42.11 million, with a historical peak of approximately $65 million, ranking 34th.

2. Trading Volume

The highest daily trading volume on the DEX of Sui occurred on May 10, exceeding 19 million dollars. Since June, the daily trading volume has mostly been between 3 million to 6 million dollars, indicating lower trading activity.

3. Activity Level

Since its launch, Sui has had a total of 16.53 million transactions, an average TPS of 3, 850,000 active addresses, and 104 active nodes. The highest TPS of 26 was recorded on May 12, coinciding with the Turbos IDO.

The highest number of daily active addresses occurred on May 20, reaching 130,000. The main reason was the opening of the permissionless pool feature by Cetus on May 19, along with meme projects conducting airdrops across the network. On regular days, the number of daily active addresses is usually below 10,000.

4. Cross-chain Bridge

Currently, there are 3 cross-chain bridges that support fund transfers to Sui: Wormhole, kriya.finance, and WELLDONE. However, there is a lack of specific cross-chain amount data.

2. Overview of Ecological Projects

As of June 14, the Sui official website's sui.directory has listed 66 projects, most of which are still in the testing phase.

Projects that have been launched and have issued tokens generally perform poorly. Leading DEX projects have all fallen below their issue price, and the social platform SUIA has seen a decline of nearly 81.82%. Suipad has performed relatively well, mainly due to its low IDO pricing, with an FDV of only 5 million dollars.

Due to the limited number of Sui users and funds, some projects like Abyss World have chosen to conduct their IDO on Polygon instead of Sui.

3. Token Release and Demand Analysis

The total supply of Sui Token is 10 billion, with an initial circulation of 528 million, accounting for 5.28%.

From May to October 2023, Sui mainly has two types of Token releases:

1. IEO Token release: approximately 34.61 million tokens per month
2. Node staking incentive release: 33.3 million tokens per month for the first three months, and 30 million tokens per month from the 4th to the 6th month.

In summary, the monthly release volume for the first three months is 67.94 million coins ( 0.67% ), equivalent to approximately 47.55 million USD; the monthly release volume for the 4th to 6th months is 64.61 million coins ( 0.64% ), equivalent to approximately 45.22 million USD.

In November 2023, a large amount of unlocking will occur, releasing over 1 billion Tokens on that day, doubling the circulation volume.

From the demand side, Sui is currently experiencing low trading activity, with few users, and there is no obvious demand for SUI Token in the short term.

4. Comparison with Aptos Token Release Model

The total supply of Aptos Token ( excluding staking incentives ) is 1 billion coins, with an initial circulation of 130 million coins, accounting for 13%.

• First year of launch: 4.54 million tokens released monthly ( 0.45% ), approximately 28 million USD
• Months 13 to 18: 20 million tokens released each month (2%)
• Months 19 to 50: Release 6.75 million tokens per month (0.67%)

Aptos has additional node staking incentives, currently issuing approximately 4.9 million coins per month at a rate of 0.49%.

Compared to Aptos, Sui has a lower initial circulation and a higher monthly release amount in the first 6 months. The first large-scale release of Sui occurs 6 months after its launch, while Aptos does so after 12 months. Sui adopts a one-time large release, while Aptos releases gradually each month.

Overall, Sui faces greater token supply pressure in the first year compared to Aptos, while Aptos's large supply arrives in the second year.

5. Conclusion

Sui is currently in a cold start phase, with insufficient users and transaction volume, and needs to attract users and funds through ongoing activities and development.

The current team is more focused on technical development, including hosting hackathons and developer events, and has not yet launched user incentive measures.

In a bear market environment, funds and users tend to be conservative. At the same time, the continued development of Ethereum's Layer 2 networks makes it more attractive to existing users, increasing the difficulty for Sui to attract funds and users.

From the perspective of the token economic model, the pressure of Sui token release is concentrated in the first year. In the case of insufficient demand, such a large token supply puts SUI token under significant selling pressure.