Is Sui the next Solana? Comparing their growth and DeFi presence reveals…

• Sui makes for a good case study across various performance metrics when compared to the likes of Solana
• DeFi performances have been among the driving forces behind both

Sui network has arguably been one of the fastest growing blockchains over the last 12 months. In fact, its performance draws parallels with Solana whose Web3 ecosystem has been quite explosive lately, especially with the memecoin culture.

However, just how does Sui stack up against Solana and could its performance signal what to expect in the next 12 months? For starters, Solana’s TVL was just below $250 million at the start of 2023. It has since seen parabolic growth, with the TVL soaring as high as $14.24 billion earlier in the week.

Sui too has been enjoying its exponential growth, from being $below $250 million to the TVL surging as high as $2.18 billion earlier this month.

source: DeFiLlama

Now granted, Sui’s TVL is currently considerably lower than that of Solana, but it may be in Solana’s position a year later. As far as volumes are concerned, Solana has been operating at a notably larger scale than Sui too.

For example, Solana hit its highest recorded daily on-chain volume of $35.89 billion on 18 January. In comparison, Sui recorded its highest daily volume at $559.97 million on 20 December. It’s still an impressive performance though, considering that it achieved just over $25 million in daily volume exactly 12 months prior.

How does Sui compare to Solana in terms of address growth?

Solana had less than 1 million daily active addresses before March 2024. However, daily active addresses have since been hovering over 5 million daily active addresses in the last 2 months.

Meanwhile, Sui daily active addresses recorded their first parabolic growth between April and Many 2024. Active addresses on the network dropped as low as 12,000 addresses just after mid April 2024. However, they peaked at 2.3 million active addresses by 23 May.

Source: Artemis.xyz

The addresses have cooled down since then, with the latest data revealing that they hovered below 600 daily active addresses as per the latest data on 22 January.

Both Solana and Sui have been seeing a surge in DeFi activity over the last few months. This is where more similarities were observed between the two. Both have been enjoying robust growth in the DeFi segment, with similar driving forces.

For example, both Sui and Solana have been seeing more stablecoin growth and institutional interest. Investors have been looking for opportunities within both ecosystems, with Solana primarily tapping into the memecoin craze. Both networks have also been enjoying robust social activity.

What this means is that while Sui may not have tapped into as much memecoin hype as Solana since it is relatively younger, it is off to a great first year. Simply put, it could still continue on its robust growth trajectory going forward, just as Solana has done over the last few years.