Author: Frank, PANews
Recently, the Sui governance token and its ecosystem experienced a remarkable surge, with the SUI token itself rising by over 75% in a week, far outperforming the market during the same period. Behind this phenomenon lies a complex interplay of driving factors, including speculative enthusiasm sparked by market rumors, significant changes in capital flows, and continuous improvements in the ecosystem's fundamentals. PANews delves deep into the capital trends, key message catalysts, on-chain data performance, and potential risks behind SUI's this round of rise, aiming to comprehensively interpret the logic behind this ecosystem carnival.
Exchange Hot Money Inflows, Contract Positions Surge
Looking at the on-chain capital flows in recent months, Sui's capital changes were not significant, with a net outflow of $32 million over a three-month period, which is not a high amount. Observing the on-chain capital flow changes in the past month and week, Sui's capital flow was even more minimal, not even ranking in the top twenty among public chains.
However, in terms of exchange capital flows, the capital inflow into the Sui ecosystem was quite noticeable. According to Coinglass data, the spot capital inflow for SUI in the past seven days reached $62.86 million, ranking fourth among all currencies, only behind USDT, ETH, and FUSD. In the contract capital inflow ranking for the past seven days, ecosystem tokens like WAL, MEMEFI, and CETUS from the Sui network also made it to the top ten, further reflecting the capital activity of the Sui ecosystem.
In terms of contract positions, the SUI token's position saw a surge starting from April 21, growing from $700 million to $1.419 billion in just a week, approaching the previous high of $1.5 billion.
Besides SUI, most tokens in its ecosystem also saw significant increases within a week. Among the Sui ecosystem tokens listed on CoinGecko, 35 tokens rose by over 100% in the past week, accounting for 20% of Sui ecosystem projects, with 37.5% of tokens rising by over 50%, truly a comprehensive bloom.
From a capital perspective, this rise was a comprehensive collective lift of the Sui ecosystem. Although most projects did not have any substantial positive developments, the price movements were quite obvious.
Multiple Positive Factors Boost Market Sentiment
On April 21, almost all mainstream tokens began to rebound synchronously, and Sui's initial rebound also started with the market rhythm, followed by several positive news. However, it's difficult to confirm whether these messages were the "engine" of Sui's surge or "smoke screens" released to accompany the price lift.
On one hand, Sui released multiple ecosystem collaboration messages. For instance, the Pokémon collaboration rumor: it began on April 23, 2025, when the PokémonHOME app updated its privacy policy, listing "Parasol Technologies" as an authorized developer allowed to receive user data. Parasol Technologies is a blockchain game studio acquired by Mysten Labs, the core development team of Sui, in March 2025. This direct connection quickly ignited market imagination, with crypto opinion leaders and social media users speculating that Pokémon might plan to integrate its IP into the Sui blockchain. Market narrative focused on potential NFT integration or blockchain-based collectibles, possibly related to the new "Medal" function of PokémonHOME.
Notably, the Sui Foundation's official blog post on April 23 about Parasol launching a trading card game on Sui did not mention Pokémon. However, some users claimed that an early version of the blog mentioned Pokémon NFT but was later edited out, further intensifying market speculation.
For example, xMoney/xPortal collaboration: On April 24, Sui announced a partnership with the financial platform xMoney and crypto super app xPortal. The core of this collaboration is to launch a Sui-branded virtual Mastercard in Europe, integrated into the xPortal app with 2.5 million users. Users can add this virtual card to ApplePay or GooglePay and use SUI and other cryptocurrencies for payments at tens of thousands of merchants, as conveniently as using cash. A physical card is planned for late 2025.
On the other hand, the ETF narrative was also considered a key factor in Sui's rise. Recently, news about 21Shares establishing a "SUI ETF" legal trust entity spread. This news is not actually new; according to Delaware company registration information, the "21SHARES SUI ETF" legal trust entity (No. 10058451) was established on January 7, 2025, registered as a common law trust. As this information was recently exposed, it seemed to provide support for SUI's rise.
Additionally, Sui network has had numerous positive news in the past one to two months, such as the Athens Stock Exchange Group announcing on April 16 the completion of technical design for an on-chain fundraising platform on Sui; Nautilus launching a verifiable off-chain privacy solution for Sui on April 15; Canary Capital submitting a SUI ETF application, and so on.
Overall, Sui's recent advances in multiple areas like Web3 gaming, privacy, and development environment have converged into an overall positive outlook. In this aspect, it differs from previous single-message-driven explosions.
Airdrop Event Drives DEX Trading Volume Surge, Facing Double Pressure of Token Unlocking and Application Construction
Since April, the Sui network's DEX trading volume has remained at a high level, especially reaching a historical peak of $998 million on March 29, with multiple days breaking $400 million in daily trading volume. The ecosystem's DEX leader, Cetus Protocol, drove the entire ecosystem's growth, with its trading volume increasing by 84.5% in the past week, and its token CETUS nearly doubling within a week.
Additionally, another important contributor is Kriya. On March 29, when Sui network's trading volume broke records, Kriya contributed $780 million, occupying a significant portion of that day's trading volume. This data increased by over 100 times compared to the previous day's $7.28 million.
Combining these, the DEX trading volume surge on March 28 was likely due to the Walrus airdrop. On March 27, the decentralized storage project Walrus, which raised $140 million, released an airdrop, and its token trading volume reached $380 million that day. This might be the main reason for the recent increase in Sui network's trading volume.
Moreover, developer activity is one of the underlying reasons for Sui network's growth. On Github, Sui network's code submissions have been frequent recently. Since December 2024, Sui network's code submission frequency has been at its peak, basically maintaining over 500 submissions per week, compared to around 250 previously. In contrast, Solana and Aptos' code submission frequencies remain around 100.
However, during this collective market carnival, there are several risk points worth noting. On one hand, SUI's token unlocking is a continuous selling pressure, with thousands of tokens being released almost weekly, making it the largest supplier in the market. These unlocked tokens are always a potential time bomb during SUI token's rise cycle.
On the other hand, the current rise structure of the Sui ecosystem is mainly led by DEX or infrastructure projects, but MEME tokens or application/game projects have yet to stand out. Currently, tokens with a market value over $10 million are still mostly early-stage projects. From this perspective, if Sui is like a city, it has built shopping malls around themes like decentralized storage, DeFi, and gaming with projects like Walrus, Deepbook, and Parasol. However, these malls are still lacking "internet celebrity stores" to further attract massive user participation.
Based on this, the recent surge of SUI token and its ecosystem is the result of market speculative enthusiasm, capital inflow, contract market expectations, and solid fundamental progress. However, while focusing on Sui's impressive price performance, it is also necessary to be wary of selling pressure caused by continuous token unlocking and pay attention to whether its application ecosystem can further prosper and give birth to truly user-attracting hit applications, which will be key to determining whether Sui can convert its current popularity into long-term value.
