Layer 1 blockchain Sui is being hyped as the “next Solana” for its high throughput potential and modern architecture.
After seeing its native token, SUI, surge more than 400% over the past year, Sui’s ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) looks poised to benefit from increased investor interest.
Sui’s dApps have already seen a significant inflow of capital — with SUI’s total value locked (TVL) surging year-on-year from about $59 million to over $1.1 billion as of October 22, 2024.
We explore the top five Sui dApps based on their TVL as of October 2024.
Key Takeaways
- Sui’s dApp ecosystem thrives with TVL surpassing $1.1 billion in October 2024.
- NAVI Protocol leads Sui’s dApps by TVL, offering lending and liquid staking services.
- Cetus Protocol dominates DEX volume with its “concentrated liquidity” model.
- Suilend’s SEND token launch in December 2024 is expected to drive its DeFi growth further.
- Aftermath Finance, a DeFi platform, offers crypto trading and liquid staking on Sui.
- Show Full Guide
Top 5 Protocols, DEXs & dApps on SUI
1. NAVI Protocol ($NAVX)
NAVI is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that provides crypto lending and liquid staking services on Sui. It is the biggest dApp on Sui, accounting for nearly one-third of Sui’s total TVL, as of October 2024.
The protocol was launched in July 2023 with the aim of being the go-to lending and borrowing platform for smart contract platforms that use the Move programming language. So far, NAVI is available only on Sui.
At the start of 2024, NAVI acquired liquid staking service provider Volo to become the “one-stop liquidity protocol on Sui”.
In February 2024, NAVI launched a governance token called $NAVX via an initial DEX offering (IDO).
Since its launch, the NAVX token has returned about 25% as of October 2024. The token boasts a market cap of over $31 million, making it the 694th largest crypto in the world.
1/
NAVI leverages Sui's unique features to bring you an enhanced Web3 experience.To achieve this, it utilizes @SuiNetwork’s technology, maximizing its features in every layer of the NAVI dApp.
Today we take a look at one of the many quality-of-life improvements released with… pic.twitter.com/mzMdXqLupv
— NAVI Protocol | navi.sui (@navi_protocol) October 18, 2024
2. Cetus Protocol ($CETUS)
Cetus Protocol is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that focuses on serving Move-based smart contract blockchains like Sui and Aptos (APT).
The platform uses a concentrated liquidity protocol pioneered by Uniswap v3 that allows liquidity providers to deploy their liquidity within a price range to improve trading efficiency.
At the time of writing, Cetus was the most dominant DEX on Sui with a market share of over 86% in terms of 24-hour trade volume, DeFilLlama data showed.
The protocol’s native token is CETUS, which is primarily used to incentivize liquidity providers to supply tokens on Cetus. Users can stake their CETUS tokens to obtain a non-transferrable governance token called xCETUS.
There were four other DEXs on Sui, namely Turbos, Kriya, FlowX Finance and DeepBook.
Out of the four, DeepBook is Cetus’s latest rival, having entered the field in October 2024. What is notable about DeepBook is that the exchange is built by Mysten Labs, Sui’s core development team.
As of October 22, 2024, the CETUS token has returned over 370% over the past year.
3. Suilend ($SEND)
Suilend is a Sui-based crypto lending platform developed by Save — a DeFi protocol on Solana which was formerly known as Solend.
Like NAVI, Suilend allows users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies on its platform. Within seven months of its launch, It had become the third largest dApp on Sui with a TVL of $207.6 million, according to DeFiLlama data on October 22, 2024.
In a bid to keep up with Sui’s DeFi leader NAVI, Suilend is building a liquid staking protocol called SpringSui for its platform.
Suilend also has a sister Sui-based NFT project called Rootlets, which was created by Rooter, founder of Suilend and Solend.
On October 22, 2024, Suilend announced that the SEND token will launch in December 2024.
The protocol has been rewarding users with “Suilend points” based on their borrowing and lending activity. These points are expected to be used as an eligibility criteria for the upcoming Suilend airdrop.
MAJOR UPDATE
Since our launch on March 11, we've surpassed $200 million in TVL.
Today we're announcing $SEND, the token for Suilend, SpringSui, and [REDACTED].
Wen SEND? 🧵 pic.twitter.com/7pvRZsOzoc
— Suilend (@suilendprotocol) October 22, 2024
4. Scallop Lend ($SCA)
Yet another crypto lending platform makes Techopedia’s list of top Sui-based dApps. Scallop Lend is a decentralized lending and borrowing platform that takes inspiration from the Ethereum-based lending protocol Compound.
Similar to Compound’s collateral tokens, Scallop Lend tokenizes debt in the form of Scallop Market Coins or sCoins.
For example, when a user supplies USDC stablecoins on Scallop, they will receive sCoins (sUSDC in this case), which represents their debt. The value of the sCoin increases over time to reflect the interest on the deposit.
Soft Liquidation is a special feature on Scallop Lend that prevents users’ collateral from being liquidated completely when their loan-to-collateral value is deemed unhealthy. Instead, users lose only a portion of their collateral instead of the entire amount.
Since its launch in May 2023, Scallop Lend has steadily become one of the biggest dApps on Sui, with a TVL of over $156 million as of October 22, 2024.
Strategic investments from Sui Foundation, CMS Holdings, and 6th Man Ventures have supported Scallop Lend’s development.
Scallop Lend’s utility token is called SCA. It is primarily used for liquidity incentivization. Users can lock their SCA tokens to receive a governance token called veSCA.
As of October 22, 2024, SCA was the 821st largest crypto in the world, with a market cap of about $20 million. Since its debut in March 2024, SCA has lost over 65% of its value.
💧Scallop Overview – All In One Guide💧
GM Scallopers!
The past few months have been exciting for Scallop as we achieve many new milestones and introduced new integrations!🔥
This thread will serve as an All-In-One overview of all you will need to know for Scallop!✨
Let's… pic.twitter.com/ldW0Fas6ug
— Scallop (@Scallop_io) May 14, 2024
5. Aftermath Finance
Aftermath Finance is a DeFi protocol that enables crypto trading and
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
liquid staking on Sui. According to its roadmap, the protocol aims to be an “all-in-one” DeFi platform that offers liquidity farming, trading, staking, perpetual trading, non-fungible tokens (NFT) trading, and lending on Sui.
As of now, Aftermath Finance facilitates crypto trading via its DEX aggregator solution called Smart Order-Router. This solution helps users find the best token swap prices on Sui by bringing together liquidity from DEXs and various pools across the network.
Aftermath Finance also offers liquid staking on its platform, where users are issued afSUI tokens after locking up their SUI tokens. Additionally, Aftermath Finance allows the permissionless creation of liquidity pools with up to 8 assets in it.
The protocol is also focused on catering to the gaming community on Sui by developing an NFT marketplace with features such as NFT fractionalization and customizable pools.
Additionally, Aftermath Finance also uses user experience-focused features such as dynamic gas (a feature that allows users to pay gas in tokens other than SUI) and zkLogin (a Sui primitive that allows application developers to build invisible wallets on behalf of their users as they log in via familiar web credentials like Gmail and Facebook accounts).
As of October 22, 2024, Aftermath Finance was the fifth largest dApp on Sui, with a TVL of over $108 million. At the time of this writing, Aftermath Finance does not have a token.
This is next level craziness in terms of routes and speed. Aftermath outdid themselves with this, all this in sub-second latency
Shout out to the chads at @AftermathFi 👏🔥 pic.twitter.com/XCRj5hRE1g— Captain (@captainsolana) July 14, 2024
The Bottom Line
It is no surprise that DEXs and crypto lending protocols have emerged as the biggest protocols on Sui.
As seen in Techopedia’s 10 Most Successful dApps of 2024 article, DEXs, and crypto lending dApps were among the highest revenue earners during the third quarter of 2024.
As the Sui ecosystem matures, we could see on-chain stablecoin protocols, RWA tokenization platforms, and restaking layers emerge on Sui.
FAQs
Why is $SUI rising?
What is NAVI Protocol?
What does Cetus Protocol do?
When will Suilend launch its SEND token?
What is Aftermath Finance?
References
- NAVI Protocol | navi.sui on X (X)
- Dexs – DefiLlama (DefiLlama)
- Solend Team Launches New DeFi Protocol Suilend (Blog Sui)
- Suilend on X (X)
- Scallop on X (X)
- Captain on X (X)