Forwarded the Original Title：Sui vs. Aptos, which one is the more promising public chain ecosystem?

In the absence of a main narrative, using the public chain ecosystem as an entry point to find Beta and Alpha may be a feasible trading strategy in the near future.

As the price of BTC surpassed $89,000, the market experienced a long-awaited bullish atmosphere, with altcoins seeing sharp increases and many public chain tokens nearly doubling in value. However, this market recovery has not led to the emergence of mainstream sectors. The market currently lacks a dominant narrative and may continue to exhibit this trend for some time. In the absence of a central narrative, utilizing the public chain ecosystem as an entry point to identify Beta and Alpha opportunities could be a viable trading strategy in the coming period. Consequently, we have developed an analytical framework to examine and compare Sui and Aptos, two standout performers in recent times.

1. Analysis framework: How to evaluate the public chain ecosystem?

The most direct factor impacting the explosion of public chains will be the massive influx of funds. Large amounts of liquidity will drive the development of the entire ecosystem. The wealth creation effect from liquidity overflow will attract more market attention and funds, continuously promoting ecosystem activity. Therefore, when evaluating public chain ecosystems, we will focus primarily on factors that may cause large fund inflows, the chain’s ability to handle liquidity, and data indicators reflecting fund and user inflows.

(1) Activity level of native token trading: Whether it’s ETH during ICOs and NFTs, SOL during the Memecoin era, or BTC during Inscriptions (promoting BTC demand through mining and purchasing), these are all native tokens for transactions. After NFTs, Memes, etc. generate strong wealth effects, users need to buy native tokens to enter new “Crypto Casinos,” creating huge demand for public chain tokens and driving price increases and ecosystem prosperity. These large “casinos” are part of the ecosystem, directly promoting growth of public chain tokens through ecosystem prosperity. They also attract substantial funds on-chain. Liquidity overflow enriches other ecosystem projects, revitalizing the entire ecosystem. There’s a conflict here between public chains and exchanges, as many quality TGE projects list directly on exchanges without benefiting the public chain. Native token transactions on public chains must rely on new assets existing only on-chain initially, like NFTs, inscriptions, and Memes. We’ll monitor new asset issuance methods with wealth creation effects on different chains, but haven’t seen significant innovation yet. In the short term, we’ll watch which public chain receives more liquidity overflow from Solana in the Meme sector.

(2) Completeness of ecosystem infrastructure and presence of incentives to attract liquidity: Infrastructure completeness determines whether funds stay after entering. User-friendly experiences and diverse yield strategies better retain users and funds. Windows and incentives for attracting liquidity promote fund inflows. Main capital entry channels are other public chains, CEXs, and Web2, with increasing friction in capital migration. The more capital sources attracted, the better for public chain development. For instance, Base, backed by Coinbase, opens a direct path from exchange to chain. Issuing cbBTC and offering liquidity incentives have attracted more TVL to the ecosystem. Solana is promoting Payment and PayFi development, aiming to attract Web2 funds on-chain.

(3) Development strategy and positioning of the public chain: This includes the chain’s planned development paths, target markets, and core tracks. For example, the Solana team has a clear development path this round. The core team started by promoting the Meme track, attracting numerous users and liquidity. They then vigorously promoted PayFi, DePIN, and other tracks leveraging high-performance public chains, attracting leading projects like Render, Grass, and IO.net. In contrast, Ethereum lacked a core development strategy this round, and its Rollup-centric roadmap has faced criticism.

(4) Changes in fund and user data: Public chain TVL is often used to measure ecosystem capital volume, but TVL mainly comprises public chain and ecosystem tokens. It’s greatly affected by token prices and can’t accurately reflect fund inflows. Additionally, platforms like DefiLlama simply sum up TVL of each DeFi protocol when calculating public chain TVL. Circulating tokens aren’t counted as TVL, though they may indicate stronger transaction demand. Therefore, this article will focus on stablecoin market cap growth, net ecosystem fund inflows, and DEX trading volume as indicators of fund and liquidity changes, while also monitoring user activity.

(5) Token distribution and price trends of public chain tokens: Public chain ecosystem growth and token prices generally complement each other. Rising public chain token prices attract more market attention. After sharp rises in public chain tokens, the market looks for ecosystem projects to invest in for higher returns. This liquidity spillover promotes ecosystem prosperity and enhances overall wealth creation effects. Token economics and distribution determine the resistance to price increases and time windows for public chain tokens. Tokens with less resistance to price increases and larger potential for growth are more likely to drive overall ecosystem prosperity.

2. Sui Ecosystem Analysis

2.1 Basic Information and Recent Progress of the Public Chain

Sui is a high-performance Layer 1 public chain based on the Move language, developed by Mysten Labs. In terms of performance, according to data published by the Sui Foundation, Sui’s highest TPS can reach 297,000. In actual operation, Sui’s current highest TPS reaches about 800.

In terms of financing background, Sui announced Series A and Series B financing, completing a total of $336M in financing, and the Series B financing valuation was $2B. The investors have strong backgrounds, including A16z, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and other leading funds participating in the investment.

The Sui mainnet was launched on May 3, 2023. Over the past year and a half, the TVL of the Sui ecosystem has grown rapidly, currently ranking 5th among all public chain ecosystems. It has developed a comprehensive DeFi infrastructure including DEXs, lending protocols, stablecoins, and liquidity staking. While the Sui ecosystem initially struggled to attract stable daily active users, it began to see significant user growth in May 2024. Currently, the number of daily active users remains steady at around 1M.

The currency price of SUI entered a rapid upward phase in September and became one of the best-performing crypto assets in September, significantly outperforming BTC and SOL. The recent price high is close to the previous high. Alongside the rising token price, Sui has recently announced several ecosystem developments:

• On September 2, 2024, Sui announced the launch of the handheld game console SuiPlay0X1, which natively supports Sui ecological games and Steam and Epic game libraries. The game console is priced at $599 and will be delivered in 2025.
• On September 12, 2024, Grayscale announced the launch of the Grayscale SUI Trust Fund, which opened to qualified investors. As of October 8, the fund had over $2.7M in Assets Under Management (AUM).
• On September 17, 2024, Sui established a partnership with Circle, expanding USDC to the Sui network. Native USDC was subsequently launched on the Sui mainnet on October 8.
• On October 1, 2024, Sui Bridge went live on the mainnet, currently supporting ETH and WETH bridging between Sui and Ethereum, with security provided by Sui network validators.

2.2 Market activity

While the Sui ecosystem hasn’t generated many new asset opportunities, Memecoin transactions were notably active in early October. Tokens such as HIPPO, BLUB, FUD, AAA, and LOOPY performed well. HIPPO, in particular, has created significant wealth. It’s now the third-largest token in the Sui ecosystem after CETUS and DEEP. Compared to its low point, HIPPO’s value has increased over 50 times, though it has fallen more than 70% from its peak. Recently, it has shown a strong rebound.

The enthusiasm for Memecoin trading is also evident in the rapid increase of new tokens. Since mid-September, the number of newly created tokens on Sui has consistently exceeded 300 per day, often surpassing 1,000 daily in October. However, this rate has recently decreased to lower levels.

Regarding Meme trading infrastructure, Cetus functions as the primary AMM. Traders generally use PinkPunkBot for automated trading. Movepump serves as a Memecoin launchpad, similar to Pump.fun. Once a token’s liquidity reaches a certain threshold, it gets listed on BlueMove DEX. This process led to a sharp increase in BlueMove’s TVL and transaction volume data in early October.

2.3 Ecosystem Overview

The Sui ecosystem comprises 86 projects according to Sui Directory statistics, primarily focusing on games (23 projects) and DeFi (16 projects), aside from infrastructure. CoinGecko data reveals that Sui ecological projects have relatively low market capitalization. HIPPO, a recent addition, is the only project in the top 500 by market cap. The top 1,000 includes FUD, CETUS, BLUB, and NAVX, alongside stablecoins. This indicates that investment opportunities are limited mainly to leading Meme and DeFi projects.

DeFiLlama reports 40 DeFi protocols in the Sui ecosystem. The top protocols by Total Value Locked (TVL) are NAVI Protocol (lending), Cetus AMM (DEX), and Suilend (lending). Following closely are Scallop Lend (lending) and Aftermath Finance (transaction aggregation with liquidity staking). Other notable protocols include AlphaFi (yield aggregation), Bucket (stablecoin), and Bluefin (derivatives trading).

• NAVI Protocol: The leading lending protocol in Sui’s ecosystem, boasting a TVL of $314.8M, with $464.63M in total loans and $149.83M in borrowed funds. Its TVL primarily consists of WUSDC, SUI, and SUI derivatives. Notably, NAVI Protocol holds $283.05M in WUSDC on the Sui chain, accounting for over 30% of its total TVL of approximately $900 million. The protocol is developing Volo, a liquidity staking protocol for SUI. Its token, NAVX, has shown impressive performance, rising over 6 times from its August 5 low of $0.003 to the current $0.19. NAVX was listed on Bybit on October 4, along with a Launchpool offering.
• Cetus AMM: A versatile DEX operating on both Sui and Aptos, Cetus is the most established DEX in the Sui ecosystem. It offers AMM Swap, limit orders, and DCA trading, utilizing a concentrated liquidity (CLMM) strategy. Cetus enhances user experience by integrating the Wormhole SDK and providing a cross-chain bridge interface. The CETUS token has performed exceptionally well, rising from $0.038 on August 5 to nearly $0.20, a more than 5-fold increase. Its recent Binance listing further boosted the price, with the current market cap around $260 million. Cetus initiated its first Meme Season on September 23, offering grants for Meme tokens traded on its platform. Since October, Cetus has seen a significant surge in trading volume, consistently exceeding $100 million daily and surpassing its March-April peak.

• Suilend: The second-largest lending protocol in the Sui ecosystem, Suilend has facilitated $227.58M in total loans with $57.69M currently borrowed. While its loan volume and utilization rate are lower than NAVI Protocol, its TVL composition is similar, primarily consisting of SUI and WUSDC. However, Suilend hasn’t yet introduced SUI derivatives. Developed by the Solend project team, it allows users to package SOL into the Sui ecosystem for interest. Both Suilend and NAVI Protocol incentivize lending, with Suilend using SUI and NAVI Protocol using vSUI. In May 2024, Suilend launched a points campaign to reward users for depositing assets on the platform.

2.4 Ecosystem Development Strategy

Web3 gaming has always been a crucial component of Sui’s ecosystem strategy. Sui’s Move language employs an object-oriented architecture, using objects as the basic unit of data storage instead of an account model like other blockchains. This enables the creation of more diverse and composable on-chain game assets on Sui. Additionally, Sui’s scalability and features like zkLogin provide gamers with an experience closer to Web2.

In Sui’s early ecosystem development, the flagship game Abyss World garnered significant market attention, backed by AMD and Epic Games. On June 24, 2023, the Japanese social game giant announced that it would become a validator node of Sui and set up a new platform in Sui. On September 22, 2023, South Korean game developer NHN was reported to be developing a chain game based on Sui. On September 28, 2023, Sui Launched the Web3 game portal Play Beyond, allowing users to explore games on Sui in one stop.

However, due to the underperformance of the blockchain gaming sector in this cycle, Sui has not yet produced any breakout game titles. While games and social projects were major sources of Sui users in 2023, the ecosystem experienced a lull in activity entering 2024.

Recently, the Sui ecosystem has shown coordinated efforts across multiple fronts, adopting a strategy reminiscent of Solana’s early days: the price of SUI tokens has risen rapidly, memes with wealth creation effects have appeared, and ecosystem tokens have taken off across the board. This is supplemented by a series of positive developments, such as Grayscale establishing a Sui Trust Fund, native USDC landing in the Sui ecosystem, ecosystem project tokens listing on major centralized exchanges, and the Sui Foundation announcing investments in ecosystem projects. These developments have quickly attracted market attention to Sui, with continuing talk of it being a potential “Solana killer.” Meanwhile, the Sui ecosystem still regards gaming as one of its main focus areas, as evidenced by the launch of SuiPlay0X1 and Grayscale promotional short for Sui games.

In terms of market focus, the Korean market has shown particularly strong interest in Sui. SUI tokens consistently rank among the top traded assets on the Upbit exchange. In SUI token spot trading volume, Upbit is second only to Binance, underscoring the Korean market’s significance in Sui’s ecosystem.

2.5 Changes in Funds and User Data

Regarding financial data, the TVL of the Sui ecosystem has grown rapidly since August 5, rising from a low of around US$300 million to over US$1 billion. However, since TVL mainly consists of SUI and ecosystem tokens, this data may not accurately reflect the true nature of the capital inflows into the Sui ecosystem.

A more accurate indicator might be the stablecoin market cap and capital inflows. The current market value of stablecoins in the Sui ecosystem is about $380 million. After August 6, the stablecoin market cap increased to $437 million before declining rapidly. In terms of capital inflow, Sui’s net inflow over the past month and three months has been positive, ranking third among all public chain ecosystems, indicating a favorable capital inflow situation. The main source of inflow and outflow funds for Sui is the Ethereum ecosystem.

Regarding transaction activity, Sui’s DEX volume ranks 6th among all public chain ecosystems. The transaction volume has been recovering significantly since September, now exceeding the peak levels seen in March-April, with daily transaction volumes surpassing $200 million. Cetus contributes more than 85% of the trading volume, with the main trading pairs being SUI-USDC, SUI-wUSDC, HIPPO-SUI, and CETUS-SUI.

In terms of user data, while the total number of active users on Sui has increased, these active users are primarily concentrated in the Social sector. The main active DApps are RECRD, BIRDS, and FanTv. However, the market discussion volume for these DApps has not increased correspondingly, raising questions about the number of real users. Excluding the Social sector and the Other sector (which includes BIRDS), user activity in the Sui ecosystem has not increased significantly. Notably, the number of daily active wallets in the DeFi sector is only 1,000-5,000. Compared to ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana, which are dominated by DeFi activities, the DeFi sector in the Sui ecosystem appears weak, and the user structure seems unhealthy. There are still doubts about the number of genuinely active users. October 2024 saw a period of Memecoin activity in the Sui ecosystem, with related peak daily active users exceeding 50,000. However, this trend was short-lived, and current Meme activity has once again declined significantly.

2.6 Tokenomics and Price Trends

The flow of SUI tokens throughout the system is as follows. Sui has a Storage Fund that receives a portion of both the Storage fees and Stake Rewards paid by users. The fund flow for each Epoch is:

• Users submit transactions and pay corresponding Computation fees and Storage fees, with Storage fees going directly to the Storage Fund.
• New SUI token inflation and Computation fees together make up Stake rewards
• The total pledge amount in each round includes two parts: the user’s pledge amount α% and the proportion of Storage fund (1-α)%
• Stake rewards are distributed proportionally (γα) to stakers and delegated stakers.
• The remaining (1-γ)(1-α) Stake rewards are transferred to the Storage Fund.
• If a user deletes stored data, the Storage Fund returns part of the storage fee to the user.

In the early stages of Sui’s ecosystem development, the Storage Fund had no outflow of funds except for returning storage fees for deleted data, creating a locking mechanism for SUI. When the locked portion exceeds token inflation, the SUI token enters a deflationary mode.

Regarding token distribution, the total supply of SUI is 10 billion. Sui announced its token unlocking schedule on June 29, 2023. According to Token Unlock data, SUI’s circulating supply is 2,763,841,372.61, accounting for 27.64% of the total. Currently, the main inflationary pressure on SUI comes from staking rewards and token unlocking. Starting from April 2024, tokens for investors, early contributors, and team members will begin to be unlocked monthly. On November 1, 2024, a total of 64.19 million SUI tokens will be unlocked, accounting for 2.32% of the circulating supply. Continued token unlocking and inflation may exert upward pressure on SUI’s price.

From a price performance perspective, the exchange rate trend of SUI against BTC has been strong. After falling to a low on October 29, it quickly rebounded. Following a period of adjustment, it continued to rise. After November 9, it rose sharply with strong volume, breaking through highs seen at the start of the year.

2.7 Summary

Over the past month, the Sui ecosystem has garnered significant market attention, primarily due to the wealth creation effect of Sui and its ecosystem tokens. We observe a synergy forming between Sui and its ecosystem, rapidly attracting attention through market dynamics and beneficial messaging. But has the Sui ecosystem truly established itself as the “new Solana”?

• Positively, we’re witnessing capital inflow into the Sui ecosystem. Despite some inflation in TVL data, Sui’s net bridge fund inflow ranks third, demonstrating its appeal for on-chain capital.
• Sui’s ecosystem produced a notable Memecoin in early October, gaining some market attention. However, its momentum and volume were noticeably weaker than those of Solana and Ethereum. We haven’t observed significant speculative funds shifting from Ethereum and Solana to Sui for Meme coins. Moreover, the Memecoin trend lacks sustainability, with user activity once again declining sharply.
• Sui continues to prioritize Web3 Gaming as a key strategy, but the gaming sector faces challenges in this cycle. Even TON’s mini-games, once considered potential drivers of mass adoption, are gradually being disproven. If Sui’s ecosystem projects fail to capitalize on this current momentum, the Sui Ecosystem might still risk fading into market obscurity.
• While the total number of daily active Sui users has increased significantly, a closer examination reveals an unhealthy distribution and potential inflation of numbers. This, coupled with the ecosystem strategy, raises concerns about the Sui ecosystem’s health and long-term viability.
• From a token perspective, SUI faces prolonged inflationary pressure, which could significantly hinder its price appreciation. Many compare SUI to SOL, but SOL had largely completed its token unlocking during its recent rise, facing minimal inflationary pressure. Continuous monitoring of SUI’s token distribution and unlocking schedule is crucial. If the native token of the public chain fails to break through, it could impede ongoing ecosystem development.

3. Aptos Ecosystem Analysis

3.1 Basic Information and Recent Progress of the Public Chain

Aptos is another Layer 1 high-performance public chain based on the Move language. Compared to Sui, Aptos retains more of Diem’s core, while Sui introduces more modifications. The main difference between the two is that Sui uses an object-based model, whereas Aptos employs an account-based model. There are also differences in their transaction parallel execution strategies. In essence, Aptos focuses more on modularization and optimizing traditional blockchain structures, while Sui proposes more innovative architecture. Regarding performance, Chainspect data shows that Aptos’ theoretical maximum TPS can reach 160,000, with the highest recorded operational TPS at 10,734, and daily TPS averaging 500-1000.

In terms of funding, Aptos announced multiple financing rounds in 2022. The Series A valuation was $2.75B, with support from leading funds such as A16z, Binance Labs, and Coinbase Ventures. On September 19, 2024, MEXC Ventures, Foresight Ventures, and Mirana Ventures jointly launched a fund to support projects in the Aptos ecosystem.

The Aptos mainnet launched on October 17, 2022. Its Total Value Locked (TVL) began rising rapidly after 2024, increasing more than threefold since the beginning of that year. It currently ranks 12th among all public chain ecosystems and has developed a relatively complete DeFi infrastructure. Aptos saw a large number of daily active users in the first month after its mainnet launch, followed by a period of inactivity for over half a year. It didn’t regain significant user activity until August 2023. Currently, the number of daily active addresses ranges from 500,000 to 600,000.

The APT token has more than doubled since its low on August 5, 2024, but remains within striking distance of its all-time high. Aptos hasn’t had any major catalysts recently, but key ecosystem developments include:

• On September 19, 2024, MEXC Ventures, Foresight Ventures, and Mirana Ventures jointly launched a fund to support projects launching in the Aptos ecosystem.
• On October 3, 2024, Aptos Labs announced its strategic expansion into the Japanese market by acquiring Palette chain developer HashPalette, aiming to promote Web3 adoption in Japanese entertainment, gaming, and digital assets.
• On October 2, 2024, Franklin Templeton expanded on-chain money market funds to the Aptos network.
• On October 28, 2024, native USDT was launched on the Aptos mainnet.

3.2 Benchmark trading activity

There are almost no means of implementing standard transactions on Aptos. There is no active and leading Memecoin, and the entire ecosystem is still in its infancy.

3.3 Ecosystem Overview

According to the Aptos official website, there are currently 192 projects, far exceeding Sui’s data. According to DeFillama data, there are 49 DeFi protocols, which is basically the same number as the Sui ecosystem. However, there are relatively few projects that have issued tokens in the Aptos ecosystem. Among the top 1,000 ecological native token-issuing projects, only Propbase (RWA platform) and Thala are among the top 1,000 ecological token-issuing projects. Additionally, Cellana’s token CELL ranks beyond 1,300 in market capitalization.

• Thala: The leading DEX on Aptos, handling 50% of the chain’s transaction volume. Core products include Swap, liquidity staking, and over-collateralized stablecoins. Thala focuses primarily on AMM transactions and offers liquidity staking, where users can obtain thAPT tokens and stake them for an APR of about 8%. As the issuer of the native stablecoin MOD on Aptos, users mint MODs by over-collateralizing APT, thAPT, and sthAPT. Thala outperforms other DEXs like LiquidSwap and Cellana Finance in recent trading volumes. The MOD/zUSDC pair (LayerZero’s USDC) is the most active, with a 24-hour volume of approximately $6M, highlighting MOD’s importance. Other high-volume pairs involve stablecoins, APT, and derivative assets. The THL token, launched in June 2023, is listed on MEXC and Gate exchanges. On-chain trading is concentrated in the THL/MOD pair. THL’s price peaked at about $3 in March-April 2024 but has since fallen to around $0.8.

• LiquidSwap: An established DEX on Aptos, accounting for 22% of the chain’s transaction volume. Developed by Pontem Network, its main trading pair is USDC-APT. It has a 24-hour transaction volume of $3M and a TVL of about $20M, with trading volume representing half of its TVL.
• Cellana Finance: Launched in February 2024, Cellana quickly became the DEX with the highest cumulative trading volume on Aptos. It maintained a daily trading volume exceeding $25M from January to October 2024, but saw a sharp decline after October 18, now averaging about $2M daily. Previously, its volume was dominated by amAPT-APT exchanges. Cellana is one of the few Aptos protocols to issue tokens. Its CELL token can be staked for veCELL, granting voting rights on CELL liquidity incentives distribution. veCELL holders receive 100% of the trading fees from their voted liquidity pools. CELL trading is currently limited to Cellana, with the CELL-APT pair accounting for 88% of its total volume.

• Aries Markets: The largest lending protocol in the Aptos ecosystem and the highest TVL DeFi protocol. It currently has $664M in total supply loans and $402M lent out. TVL has grown significantly over the past two years. Major asset types include zUSDT, zUSDC, stAPT, and APT. Deposits in zUSDT and zUSDC can earn an annualized return of 12%, mainly from APT subsidies. Aries is a key interest-earning platform for stablecoins on Aptos. Beyond lending, it integrates AMM, limit order trading, and cross-chain bridges. While Aries hasn’t issued tokens yet, it runs a points program rewarding users for deposits and borrowing.
• Amnis Finance: The largest liquidity staking protocol on Aptos. Users receive 1amAPT for depositing 1APT, which can be staked for stAPT, yielding about 9% in staking rewards. Launched in October 2023, Amnis has seen steady TVL growth and is the second-highest TVL DeFi protocol on Aptos. Its amAPT and stAPT tokens are widely integrated into the Aptos ecosystem. In November 2023, Amnis introduced a points and retroactive airdrop plan, explicitly linking points to future AMI token airdrops.
• Echo Lending: Echo introduces BTC assets to the Move ecosystem by bridging BTC assets from the Bsquared Network to Aptos, offering multi-layered benefits. It bridges BTC L2’s uBTC to Aptos as aBTC. Users lending aBTC through Echo can earn APT subsidy income. This process allows users to accumulate Bsquared points, Echo points, and APT rewards. Currently, lending aBTC offers an annual 12% APT subsidy, though the deposit limit has been reached. Echo’s TVL has grown rapidly since its Aptos launch, now exceeding $170M and ranking fourth among Aptos protocols in terms of TVL.

3.4 Ecosystem Development Strategy

In terms of ecological strategy, Aptos and Sui have different focuses. Aptos’ recent focus includes RWA, Bitcoin ecosystem and AI.

RWA: Aptos is actively promoting the tokenization of real assets and institutional financial solutions. In July 2024, Aptos officially announced the integration of Ondo Finance’s USDY into its ecosystem, incorporating it into major DEX and lending applications. As of November 10, the market value of USDY on Aptos was approximately US$15 million, accounting for about 3.5% of USDY’s total market value. In October 2024, Aptos announced that Franklin Templeton had launched the Franklin On-Chain U.S. Government Currency Fund (FOBXX), represented by the BENJI token on the Aptos Network. Additionally, Aptos has partnered with Libre to implement securities tokenization.

Bitcoin Ecosystem: Aptos is actively participating in BTCFi and connecting Bitcoin assets on BTC L2 to the Aptos ecosystem to enhance asset diversity and expand TVL. In September 2024, Aptos officially announced its collaboration with Stacks to introduce sBTC to the Aptos network. However, sBTC has not yet been effectively integrated with mainstream DeFi protocols, leaving the impact of this strategy on Aptos uncertain. Furthermore, Aptos has established cooperation with Bsquared Network through the Echo protocol. The BTC assets introduced so far have exceeded US$170 million. Aptos offers high APT incentives (annualized 12%) to encourage cross-chain transfers and deposits of BTC assets, demonstrating the importance the Aptos ecosystem places on attracting BTC assets. The introduction of BTC assets will increase the TVL growth potential and foster the development of DeFi protocols on Aptos. It is crucial to monitor changes in related asset TVL and Aptos official incentives.

AI: Aptos is still in the very early stages of AI development. In September 2024, Aptos released a document announcing a partnership with the Ignition AI accelerator, supported by NVIDIA, Tribe, and DISG, to promote the development of AI startups in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

3.5 Changes in Funds and User Data

Regarding financial data, Aptos’ TVL and stablecoin market capitalization have maintained a relatively healthy growth trend. TVL calculated in USD peaked in early April, then declined due to the sharp drop in APT and its ecosystem token prices. However, TVL calculated in APT has maintained an upward trend. From September 18 to the peak on October 22, USD-denominated TVL doubled. Currently, there’s a slight pullback due to declining APT prices. APT-denominated TVL has grown from 70M APT to 90M APT. Two main factors contributed to this month’s TVL increase: first, rising APT prices, as APT is the main asset in its ecosystem TVL; second, the launch of Echo lending, which quickly attracted 14.7M APT of TVL, accounting for most of the 20M increase. Therefore, while Aptos’ TVL appears to have increased significantly this month, its actual contribution to ecosystem liquidity has been limited.

The Aptos ecosystem’s stablecoins are primarily USDC. Stablecoin market capitalization has risen steadily from $50M in early 2024 to $292.41M now, more than a fourfold increase, and continues to trend upward.

In terms of capital inflows, Aptos has seen net inflows over three months, totaling approximately $3M. In the past month, Aptos’ main capital inflow came from Sui, with additional inflows from Solana and Ethereum. The primary destination for capital outflow is Moonbeam. Overall, Aptos is relatively healthy in terms of capital, with increasing amounts in the ecosystem. However, we haven’t observed a trend of funds overflowing from other ecosystems (especially Ethereum and Solana).

Regarding transaction activity, Aptos’ DEX transaction volume ranks 12th among all public chain ecosystems. Transaction volume began increasing significantly after April 2024 and currently remains at a relatively high level. Transactions are mainly concentrated in Thala and LiquidSwap.

In terms of user growth, Aptos’ daily active users peaked at the end of October, with daily active wallets exceeding 800K. According to DappRadar data, the applications with the most active users in the Aptos ecosystem include Kana Labs, Chingari, STAN, KGeN, and ERAGON. Meanwhile, Aminis, the DeFi infrastructure project with the highest active users, only has 6K UAW (compared to Kana Labs’ 150K+), and DEXs have only 1K active users. This indicates that Aptos has not yet achieved healthy ecosystem development. The number of on-chain transaction users is very low, and user demand for entering Aptos ecosystem transactions and speculation is minimal. (For comparison, Solana’s user data shows Raydium, the top project, exceeds 3M UAW, and Jupiter, the second-place project, has 251K UAW, far surpassing other projects)

3.6 Tokenomics and Price Trends

APT’s initial token supply is 10B, with distribution ratios and schedules as shown in the figure below. Although 51.02% of the tokens are allocated to the community, these tokens are initially concentrated in the hands of the foundation. 410,217,359.767 are managed by the foundation and 100,000,000 are held by Aptos Labs. 125,000,000 of them will be used for ecosystem project incentives, with the remainder’s distribution unclear. Core contributors and investors face linear unlocking after a one-year lock-up period. Currently, the main token unlocks come from the community, foundation, investors, and core contributors, with 11.31 million tokens unlocked monthly, creating significant selling pressure.

Regarding price trends, APT is slightly underperforming against BTC. It has remained at low levels since its decline in early 2024. After some gains in September and October, it experienced a sharp drop on October 29 and is currently seeing a slight recovery. However, it hasn’t surpassed BTC’s early October high and remains far below its peak from the beginning of the year.

3.7 Summary

As Sui’s Move ecosystem counterpart, Aptos has also garnered significant market attention recently. There’s ongoing debate about which could become the “Solana Killer.” Here’s a summary of the Aptos ecosystem’s development:

• Aptos’ TVL is rising significantly while maintaining positive inflows, but the inflows are much smaller than Sui’s.
• Aptos’ ecosystem development is in its early stages. There are few on-chain transaction targets and no high-value Memecoins, resulting in extremely low transaction volumes and on-chain activity.
• Aptos focuses on RWA and BTCFi as core ecosystem development strategies, aiming to open new capital inflows to expand ecosystem TVL. It’s worth monitoring the market value growth of related assets and their integration with Aptos DeFi applications.
• Similar to Sui, Aptos’ user structure has issues, with a low number of DeFi users.
• Token-wise, APT faces high unlocking selling pressure, potentially resisting price increases. In terms of price performance, APT’s short-term trend isn’t as strong as SUI’s, but it follows a similar upward trajectory.

4. Summary: Comparison between Sui Ecosystem and Aptos Ecosystem

The above table lists the main data comparison between the Sui and Aptos ecosystems, as well as the data comparison between the two main DeFi protocols. Here we make a summary of the comparative study of the two ecosystems:

• TVL (Total Value Locked): Both ecosystems have similar TVLs, but SUI’s recent price increase has significantly outpaced APT’s, leading to higher market capitalization for Sui’s ecosystem tokens. This is a key factor in Sui’s TVL advantage over Aptos. While both have recently achieved TVL highs, this is primarily due to increased token prices rather than substantial organic growth.
• Capital Flow: Sui continues to see large net inflows, ranking third after Base and Solana ecosystems, primarily attracting funds from Ethereum. In contrast, Aptos has minimal net inflows (less than 1%), mostly from Sui. This suggests Sui is currently the main gateway to the Move ecosystem, with Aptos primarily receiving spillover capital from Sui, albeit at a very limited rate.
• On-chain Activity: Sui’s DEX trading volume is 10 times that of Aptos, indicating higher trading activity. However, both ecosystems show relatively low DeFi user activity compared to mature blockchains like Solana, suggesting room for improvement in user structure health.
• Ecosystem Development: Sui experienced strong growth in native and ecosystem token prices in October, actively promoting exchange listings for projects like NAVX on Bybit and Cetus on Binance. This increased market attention and ecosystem interest, creating synergy for rapid short-term development. Aptos’ ecosystem development is comparatively weaker, with few core ecosystem tokens beyond THL and CELL, and limited Memecoin development. Despite APT’s rapid price increase, ecosystem tokens haven’t seen significant growth.
• Development Strategy: Sui initially attracted on-chain funds through Memecoins, though this trend was short-lived. Its long-term focus is on Web3 Gaming. Aptos aims to increase ecosystem TVL through RWA (Real World Assets) and BTCFi, with Echo showing promising short-term results.
• Token Unlocking: Both SUI and APT face substantial monthly unlocking selling pressure. SUI unlocks 64.19M tokens (about $2 million) monthly, 2.32% of circulating supply, while APT unlocks 11.31M tokens (about $1.2 million), 2.17% of circulating supply.
• Price Trends: In recent trading, SUI has shown stronger momentum, breaking through previous highs and its yearly high against BTC. APT, however, has been relatively weaker, not yet returning to its late October BTC exchange rate levels.

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1. This article is reprinted from [TechFlow]. Forwarded the Original Title “Sui vs. Aptos, which one is the more promising public chain ecosystem?” All copyrights belong to the original author [深潮TechFlow]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
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