Sui’s emergence as a competitive blockchain in 2023-2024 was accompanied by the rapid development of a native DeFi ecosystem. Built on the Move programming language (designed for safe, formal asset management) and featuring object-centric parallel transaction execution, Sui offered DeFi developers a different technical substrate than EVM-compatible chains. The Sui DeFi ecosystem matured quickly: by 2024, Sui had a functioning AMM (Cetus), lending protocol (Scallop and NAVI), liquid staking (Aftermath Finance), derivatives protocol (Bluefin), DEX aggregator (Aftermath, Hop), and an NFT marketplace (Sui NFT ecosystem). SUI token’s price appreciation in 2024 inflated on-chain TVL significantly, but the ecosystem growth was real.
Sui Technical Properties Enabling DeFi
The following sections cover this in detail.
Object-Centric Architecture
DeFi implications:
- Parallel execution of transactions that don’t interact with the same objects
- No global state contention (no gas auctions during peak demand)
- Type-safe asset handling enforced at the language level (Move objects = assets with linear type guarantees)
Parallel Transaction Execution
- Complex DeFi transactions (interacting with shared objects like AMM pools) are still sequenced but benefit from overall network throughput
- Practical result: Sui handles peak throughput much better than single-threaded EVM chains
zkLogin and Sponsored Transactions
- Sponsored transactions allow dApps to pay gas for users
- Combined effect: dramatically lower onboarding friction for DeFi users compared to EVM chains
Cetus Protocol
What it is: Cetus is Sui’s largest AMM / DEX, implementing concentrated liquidity (similar to Uniswap v3).
Concentrated liquidity:
LPs choose price ranges to provide liquidity to, concentrating capital where most trading occurs and earning higher fees for the same capital deployed vs. full-range AMMs.
Key features:
- CLMM (Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker) pools
- Auto-compounding strategies (“vaults” that automatically reinvest fees)
- CETUS governance and liquidity mining token
- Integrates with other Sui DeFi protocols as liquidity layer
TVL: Consistently Sui’s largest DEX by volume and TVL (hundreds of millions at peak 2024)
Security incident: Cetus suffered a $223M exploit in May 2025, where an attacker manipulated pool math using very small amounts of a low-liquidity token. Sui validators used their “freezing” capability to freeze some attacker addresses, which generated controversy about Sui’s decentralization properties.
Scallop Lend
What it is: Scallop positions itself as an institutional-grade lending protocol on Sui — with an emphasis on security, risk management, and compliance-friendly design.
Core mechanics:
- Supply assets (SUI, USDC, wETH) to earn yield
- Borrow against collateral at variable rates
- sSCA governance token for protocol decisions
- Risk parameters computed by professional risk team rather than pure governance
Differentiator:
Scallop emphasizes auditing, formal verification, and risk management tooling more explicitly than many DeFi-native protocols — presumably targeting institutional/semi-institutional capital.
TVL: One of Sui’s top 3 lending protocols consistently.
NAVI Protocol
What it is: NAVI (Navigator) is Sui’s other major money market protocol — arguably the largest lending protocol on Sui by TVL for much of 2023-2024.
Core mechanics:
- Supply-and-borrow money market (Aave/Compound model applied to Sui)
- Leveraged liquid staking strategies (deposit SUI → borrow SUI → stake → repeat)
- NAVX governance token
- Integration with Sui’s liquid staking tokens (afSUI, vSUI)
Unique feature: Deep integration with Sui’s liquid staking ecosystem. NAVI loops facilitate leveraged staking positions: deposit SUI, borrow more SUI, stake it all, the staking yield exceeds borrow rate → net leveraged staking yield.
Liquid Staking on Sui
Sui proof-of-stake validators can be delegated to via liquid staking:
Aftermath Finance:
- Largest Sui liquid staking provider
- afSUI = liquid staked SUI (accrues staking rewards, tradeable)
- Integration with Aftermath’s DEX (also built by same team)
Volo:
- Another liquid staking provider
- vSUI = liquid staked SUI
Haedal:
- Younger liquid staking entrant
Leverage loop strategy: Deposit SUI → mint afSUI → collateralize afSUI in NAVI → borrow SUI → stake for more afSUI → repeat up to ~2-3x leverage. Works as long as staking yield > borrow rate.
Bluefin (Derivatives)
Bluefin is Sui’s primary perpetual futures protocol, having migrated from the Arbitrum ecosystem to Sui.
Features:
- BTC, ETH, SUI perpetuals
- Cross-margined accounts
- BLUE governance token
- Built for low-latency, high-throughput trading (Sui’s parallel execution helps)
DeFi TVL and Growth
Sui’s DeFi TVL trajectory:
- Early 2023 (launch): ~$10M
- End 2023: ~$200M
- Mid 2024: ~$600M-$900M (SUI price-amplified)
- Late 2024: $1B+ at peak
Note: As with all L1 TVL, expressed in USD it is heavily influenced by the native token’s price. In SUI-denominated TVL, growth was more consistent.
How to Access Sui DeFi
- Get SUI tokens via (SUI listed on major CEXes)
- Set up a Sui wallet:
Sui Wallet (official browser extension)
Suiet (popular alternative)
Mysten-maintained wallets
Or zkLogin (Google/Apple for zero-friction setup) - Bridge USDC: Wormhole or Celer to bring stablecoins from Ethereum
- Go to app.cetus.zone (DEX), app.scallop.io (lending), or app.naviprotocol.io (lending)
For cold storage: (Sui support added in 2023)
Social Media Sentiment
Sui DeFi attracted significant attention in 2024 as SUI became one of the top-performing Layer 1 tokens. The Move language and object model were praised by developers for their safety properties. Cetus, NAVI, and Scallop are generally well-regarded as solidly built protocols. The May 2025 Cetus exploit and subsequent validator-level account freezing generated the most significant controversy — the Sui Foundation and validators used validator-level coordination to freeze attacker addresses, which critics argued demonstrated that Sui is not sufficiently decentralized for trustless DeFi, while supporters argued it was a pragmatic defense of user funds. The incident highlighted the fundamental tension in newer chains between administrative pragmatism and censorship resistance. Sui’s DeFi ecosystem remains active and growing but is smaller than Ethereum and Solana ecosystems by any measure.
Last updated: 2026-04
Related Terms
Sources
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