Sui DeFi Ecosystem in 2025: Liquidity, Abstraction, and New Primitives

1. Liquidity and Growth of Sui DeFi

Figure: Sui’s DeFi TVL (blue line) and DEX volume (green bars) grew dramatically through Q2 2025.

Total Value Locked (TVL) Surge: The Sui network’s DeFi liquidity has grown explosively over the past year. From roughly $600M TVL in late 2024, Sui’s TVL rocketed to over $2 billion by mid-2025. In fact, Sui peaked at about $2.55B TVL on May 21, 2025 and sustained well above $2B for much of Q2. This ~300%+ increase (a 480% year-over-year rise from May 2023) firmly positions Sui among the top 10 blockchains by DeFi TVL, outpacing growth on networks like Solana. Major catalysts included institutional adoption and the integration of native USDC stablecoin support, which together attracted large capital inflows. Notably, Sui’s monthly DEX trading volumes have climbed into the top tier of all chains – exceeding $7–8 billion per month by mid-2025 (ranking ~8th industry-wide). The circulating stablecoin liquidity on Sui surpassed $1 billion in mid-2025, after growing 180% since the start of the year, indicating deepening on-chain liquidity. Cross-chain capital is flowing in as well; around $2.7B of assets have been bridged into Sui’s ecosystem, including Bitcoin liquidity (details below). This rapid growth trend underscores a year of net inflows and user expansion for Sui DeFi.

Major DEXs and Liquidity Providers: Decentralized exchanges form the backbone of Sui’s DeFi liquidity. The Cetus protocol – an automated market maker (AMM) and aggregator – has been a flagship DEX, offering stablecoin swaps and concentrated liquidity pools. Cetus consistently leads in volume (facilitating $12.8B+ in trades during Q2 2025 alone) while holding around $80M TVL. Another key player is Bluefin, a multi-faceted DEX that operates both a spot AMM and a perpetual futures exchange. Bluefin expanded its offerings in 2025 with innovative features: it introduced BluefinX, Sui’s first RFQ (request-for-quote) system for improved price execution, and even integrated high-frequency trading optimizations to narrow the gap between DEX and CEX performance. By Q2, Bluefin’s AMM held about $91M TVL and saw over $7.1B in quarterly spot volume. Momentum is another rising DEX – it launched a concentrated liquidity market maker (CLMM) that quickly amassed $107M in liquidity and generated ~$4.6B in trading volume shortly after launch. Sui’s DEX sector also includes MovEX (a hybrid AMM + order-book exchange) and Turbos (an early CLMM adopter), among others, each contributing to the diverse liquidity landscape. Notably, Sui supports a native on-chain central limit order book called DeepBook, co-developed with MovEX, which provides shared order-book liquidity to any Sui dApp. This combination of AMMs, aggregators, and an on-chain CLOB gives Sui one of the more robust DEX ecosystems in DeFi.

Lending Markets and Yield Protocols: Sui’s lending and borrowing platforms have attracted significant capital, making up a large share of the TVL. The Suilend protocol stands out as Sui’s largest DeFi platform, with roughly $700M+ in TVL by Q2 2025 (having crossed the $1B mark in early 2025). Suilend is an expansion of Solana’s Solend, brought to Sui’s Move runtime, and it quickly became the flagship money-market on Sui. It offers deposit and collateralized borrowing services for assets like SUI and USDC, and has innovated by launching companion products – for example, SpringSui (a liquid staking module) and STEAMM, an AMM that enables “superfluid” use of liquidity within the platform. By gamifying user engagement (through point campaigns and NFTs) and issuing a governance token $SEND with revenue-sharing, Suilend drove rapid adoption – reporting over 50,000 monthly active wallets by mid-2025. Close behind Suilend is Navi Protocol (also referred to as Astros), which similarly reached on the order of $600–700M TVL in its lending pools. Navi sets itself apart by blending lending markets with yield strategies and even Bitcoin DeFi integration: for example, Navi facilitated a campaign for users to stake xBTC (a BTC proxy on Sui) via the OKX Wallet, incentivizing Bitcoin holders to participate in Sui yield opportunities. Other notable lending platforms include Scallop (~$146M TVL) and AlphaLend (~$137M), which together indicate a competitive market for borrowing and lending on Sui. Yield aggregation has also started to take hold – protocols like AlphaFi and Kai Finance each manage tens of millions in assets (e.g. ~$40M TVL) to optimize yield across Sui farms. Though smaller in scale, these yield optimizers and structured products (e.g. MovEX’s structured yield vaults) add depth to Sui’s DeFi offerings by helping users maximize returns from the growing liquidity base.

Liquid Staking and Derivatives: In parallel, Sui’s liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) and derivative trading platforms represent an important slice of the ecosystem’s liquidity. Because Sui is a proof-of-stake chain, protocols like SpringSui, Haedal, and Volo have introduced tokens that wrap staked SUI, allowing stakers to remain liquid. SpringSui – launched by the Suilend team – quickly became the dominant LSD, holding about $189M in staked SUI by end of Q2. Together with Haedal ($150M) and others, Sui’s LSD platforms give users the ability to earn validator rewards while redeploying staking tokens into DeFi (for example, using staked-SUI as lending collateral or in yield farms). On the derivatives front, Sui now hosts multiple on-chain perpetual futures exchanges. We’ve mentioned Bluefin’s perp DEX (Bluefin Perps) which handled billions in quarterly volume. Additionally, Typus Finance launched Typus Perp (TLP) in Q2 2025, entering Sui’s perps market with an impressive debut. Sudo (with its ZO protocol integration) introduced gamified perpetual swaps and “intelligent” leveraged products, growing its user base and liquidity by over 100% last quarter. The Magma protocol even pioneered a new AMM model – an Adaptive Liquidity Market Maker (ALMM) – aiming for zero-slippage trades and greater capital efficiency in swaps. These innovative DEX and derivative designs are attracting liquidity of their own (e.g. Magma’s TVL doubled in Q2) and enhancing Sui’s reputation as a testbed for next-gen DeFi primitives.

Trends in Capital Inflow and Users: The overall liquidity trend on Sui has been strongly positive, fueled by both retail and institutional inflows. Sui’s growing credibility (e.g. HSBC and DBS Bank joining as network validators) and high performance have drawn in new capital. A significant portion of assets bridged into Sui are blue-chip tokens and stablecoins – for instance, Circle’s USDC launched natively on Sui, and Tether’s USDT became available via bridges, leading to a robust stablecoin mix (USDC ~$775M, USDT ~$100M circulating by Q2). Perhaps most notably, Bitcoin liquidity has entered Sui in size (via wrapped or staked BTC – detailed in Section 3), accounting for over 10% of TVL. On the user side, improved wallet support and abstraction (see Section 2) have spurred adoption. The popular Phantom wallet (with ~7M users) extended support to Sui, making it easier for the broad crypto community to access Sui dApps. Similarly, centralized exchange wallets like OKX and Binance integrated Sui DeFi features (e.g. Binance’s Chrome wallet added a Simple Yield integration featuring Sui’s Scallop protocol). These on-ramps contributed to Sui’s user growth: by early 2025 Sui had hundreds of thousands of active addresses, and top dApps like Suilend report tens of thousands of monthly users. Overall, liquidity on Sui has trended upward in 2025, supported by consistent inflows and expanding user participation – a stark contrast to the stagnation seen on some other chains during the same period.

2. Abstraction: Simplifying User Experience on Sui

Account Abstraction Features: A cornerstone of Sui’s design is account abstraction, which vastly improves usability by hiding blockchain complexities from end-users. Unlike traditional Layer-1s where users must manage keys and gas for every transaction, Sui enables a smoother experience via native features. Specifically, Sui supports third-party credential logins and gas sponsorship at the protocol level. Developers can integrate zkLogin – allowing users to create a Sui wallet and log in with familiar Web2 credentials (Google, Facebook, Twitch, etc.) instead of seed phrases. Concurrently, Sui offers sponsored transactions, meaning dApp builders can pay gas fees on behalf of users through an on-chain “gas station” mechanism. Together, zkLogin and gas sponsorship remove two major pain points (seed phrase management and acquiring native tokens) for new users. A Sui user can, for example, sign up with an email/password (via OAuth) and start using a DeFi app immediately with no upfront SUI tokens needed. This level of abstraction mirrors Web2 ease-of-use and has been critical in onboarding the “next wave” of users who expect frictionless signup and free trial experiences. Many Sui apps and even Web3 games now leverage these features – a recent NFT game launch boasted a “zero-wallet login” flow for players, powered by Sui’s account abstraction and social login capabilities. Overall, by automating key management and gas handling, Sui significantly lowers the barrier to entry for DeFi, which in turn drives higher user retention and activity.

Smart Contract Abstraction and Move: Beyond login and transactions, Sui’s object-oriented programming model provides abstraction at the smart contract level. Sui’s native Move language treats objects (not externally owned accounts) as the basic unit of storage, with rich metadata and flexible ownership structures. This means developers can create smart contract objects that act as proxies for user accounts, automating tasks that would traditionally require user signatures. For example, an app on Sui can deploy a programmable object to handle recurring payments or complex multi-step trades on behalf of a user, without that user manually initiating each step. These objects can hold permissions and logic, effectively abstracting away repetitive actions from the end-user. Additionally, Sui introduced Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs) as a way to bundle multiple operations into a single transaction payload. Instead of requiring a user to sign and send 3–4 separate transactions (e.g. approve token, then swap, then stake), a Sui PTB can compose those steps and execute them all at once. This not only reduces friction and confirmation prompts for the user, but also improves performance (fewer on-chain transactions means lower total gas and faster execution). From the user’s perspective, a complex series of actions can feel like one smooth interaction – a critical improvement in UX. Sui’s Move was built with such composability and abstraction in mind, and it’s enabling developers to craft dApps that feel much more like traditional fintech apps. As an added bonus, Sui’s cryptographic agility supports multiple signature schemes (Ed25519, secp256k1, etc.), which allows wallets to use different key types (including those used on Ethereum or Bitcoin). This flexibility makes it easier to integrate Sui functionality into multi-chain wallets and even sets the stage for quantum-resistant cryptography down the line.

Cross-Chain Abstraction – Intents and Integration: Sui is breaking ground in cross-chain user experience through abstraction as well. A prime example is the July 2025 integration of NEAR Intents, a novel cross-chain coordination system, into Sui’s ecosystem. With this integration, Sui users can seamlessly swap assets across 20+ other chains (including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Avalanche, etc.) in a single step, without manual bridging. The underlying “intent” model means the user simply expresses what they want (e.g. “swap 1 ETH on Ethereum for SUI on Sui”) and a network of automated solvers finds the most efficient way to fulfill that request across chains. The user no longer needs to juggle multiple wallets or gas fees on different networks – the system abstracts all that away. Swapping assets into Sui becomes as easy as a one-click transaction, with no need to even hold gas tokens on the source chain. This is a significant UX leap for cross-chain DeFi. By mid-2025, NEAR Intents was live and Sui users could bring in outside liquidity within seconds, enabling use cases like cross-chain arbitrage and onboarding of assets from non-Sui holders with virtually no friction or custodial risk. Sui Foundation representatives highlighted that “swapping native assets in one click…abstracts away complexity while keeping everything on-chain, secure, and composable”. In parallel, Sui has benefited from major wallet integrations that hide complexity for users. As noted, Phantom’s multi-chain wallet now supports Sui, and other popular wallets like OKX and Binance Wallet have built-in support for Sui dApps. For instance, Binance’s wallet lets users directly access yield farms on Sui (via Scallop) through a simple interface, and OKX’s wallet integrated Sui’s BTC staking flows (Navi’s xBTC) natively. These integrations mean users can interact with Sui DeFi without switching apps or worrying about technical details – their familiar wallet abstracts it for them. All of these efforts, from intents-based swaps to wallet UIs, serve the goal of making cross-chain and on-chain DeFi feel effortless on Sui. The result is that Sui is increasingly accessible not just to crypto natives but also to mainstream users who demand simplicity.

User Experience Impact: Thanks to Sui’s abstraction layers, the user experience on Sui’s DeFi protocols has become one of the most user-friendly in blockchain. New users can onboard with a social login and no upfront cost, execute complex transactions with minimal confirmations, and even move assets from other chains with one-click swaps. This approach is fulfilling Sui’s mission of “familiar onboarding” and mass adoption. As a point of comparison, just as an iPhone user doesn’t need to understand Swift code to use an app, a Sui DeFi user shouldn’t need to grasp private keys or bridge mechanics. Sui’s account abstraction ethos embraces that philosophy, “offering a gateway to a seamless and gratifying user experience” for blockchain finance. By making Web3 interactions feel closer to Web2 in ease, Sui is lowering barriers for the next wave of DeFi users who value convenience. This user-centric design is a key factor in Sui’s growing adoption and sets the stage for greater mainstream participation in DeFi through 2025 and beyond.

3. The Next Wave of DeFi Primitives on Sui

Proliferation of Native Stablecoins: A vibrant array of new stablecoins and asset-backed tokens is emerging on Sui, providing foundational building blocks for DeFi. In late 2024, Agora Finance’s AUSD went live as the first fully USD-backed stablecoin native to Sui. Marketed as an institutional-grade stablecoin, AUSD’s launch immediately added liquidity and was a boon for Sui’s DeFi growth (Sui’s TVL was about $600M when AUSD arrived and climbing). By mid-2025, AUSD had a circulating supply of tens of millions (with more on Ethereum and Avalanche) and became a regulated alternative to USDC/USDT within Sui’s ecosystem. Around the same time, the Bucket Protocol introduced BUCK, an over-collateralized stablecoin akin to DAI but for Sui. Users can mint BUCK by depositing SUI, BTC, ETH, and other assets as collateral. BUCK is pegged to USD and maintained via on-chain collateral ratios and stability mechanisms (Bucket features a Peg Stability Module, CDP vaults, etc., similar to MakerDAO). By Q2 2025, BUCK’s supply reached ~$60–66M, making it one of the largest Sui-native stablecoins (Bucket’s protocol TVL was ~$69M in that period, mostly backing BUCK). Another notable addition is USDY by Ondo Finance – a yield-bearing “stablecoin” that tokenizes short-term U.S. Treasury yields. Ondo deployed USDY onto Sui in early 2024, marking Sui’s foray into real-world asset (RWA) backed tokens. USDY is effectively a tokenized bond fund that accrues interest for holders (its price floats slightly, reflecting earned yield). This provides Sui users with a native, compliance-focused stable asset that generates yield without needing to stake or farm. By 2025, Sui’s stablecoin landscape also included First Digital USD (FDUSD), brought via partnerships in Asia, and wrapped versions of major stablecoins. The variety of stablecoin primitives – from decentralized CDP-backed (BUCK) to fully fiat-backed (AUSD) to yield-bearing (USDY) – is expanding on-chain liquidity and enabling new DeFi strategies (e.g. using BUCK as loan collateral, or holding USDY as a low-risk yield source). These stable assets form the bedrock for other protocols like DEXs and lenders to build upon, and their presence is a strong signal of a maturing DeFi ecosystem.

BTC DeFi (“BTCfi”) Innovations: Sui is at the forefront of making Bitcoin an active player in DeFi, coining the term BTCfi for Bitcoin-centric DeFi use cases. In 2025, multiple initiatives bridged Bitcoin’s liquidity and security into Sui’s network. One major step was the integration of Threshold Network’s tBTC on Sui. tBTC is a decentralized, 1:1 BTC-backed token that uses threshold cryptography (distributed signing) to avoid any single custodian. In July 2025, tBTC went live on Sui, immediately unlocking access to over $500M worth of BTC liquidity for Sui protocols. This means Bitcoin holders can now mint tBTC directly into Sui and deploy it in lending, trading, or yield farming without entrusting their BTC to a centralized bridge. Sui’s high-performance infrastructure (with sub-second finality) makes it an attractive home for these BTC assets. In parallel, Sui partnered with the Stacks ecosystem to support sBTC, another 1:1 BTC representation that piggybacks off Bitcoin’s security via the Stacks layer-2. By May 2025, over 10% of Sui’s TVL consisted of BTC or BTC-derived assets as bridges like Wormhole, Stacks, and Threshold ramped up Bitcoin connectivity. More than 600 BTC (>$65M) had flowed into Sui in just the first few months of 2025. These BTC derivatives unlock use cases such as using BTC as collateral on Sui’s lending platforms (indeed, Suilend held over $102M in Bitcoin-based assets by Q2, more than any other Sui lender). They also enable BTC trading pairs on Sui DEXs and allow Bitcoin holders to earn DeFi yields without giving up their BTC ownership. The concept of BTCfi is to transform Bitcoin from a “passive” store-of-value into an active capital asset – and Sui has embraced this by providing the technology (fast, parallel execution and an object model ideal for representing BTC custody) and forging partnerships to bring in Bitcoin liquidity. The Sui Foundation even began running a Stacks validator, signaling its commitment to BTC integration. In short, Bitcoin is now a first-class citizen in Sui DeFi, and this cross-pollination is a key innovation of 2025. It opens the door for new Bitcoin-backed stablecoins, Bitcoin yield products, and multi-chain strategies that bridge the gap between the Bitcoin network and DeFi on Sui.

Advanced DEX Primitives and HFT: The next wave of Sui DeFi primitives also includes novel exchange designs and financial instruments that go beyond the initial AMM models. We’ve seen earlier how Magma’s ALMM and Momentum’s CLMM are pushing AMMs toward greater capital efficiency (concentrating liquidity or dynamically adjusting it). Additionally, protocols are experimenting with high-performance trading features: Bluefin in particular rolled out functionalities aimed at institutional and high-frequency traders. In July 2025, Bluefin announced it was bringing institutional-grade high-frequency trading strategies to its Sui-based DEX, using Sui’s parallel execution to achieve throughput and latency improvements. This narrows the performance gap with centralized exchanges and could attract quantitative trading firms to provide liquidity on-chain. Such enhancements in execution speed, low slippage, and MEV protection (Bluefin’s Spot 2.0 upgrade is noted for MEV-resistant RFQ matching) are new primitives in exchange design that Sui is pioneering.

Meanwhile, derivatives and structured products on Sui are becoming more sophisticated. Typus expanding into perpetual futures and Sudo/ZO offering gamified perps were mentioned; these indicate a trend of blending DeFi with trading gamification and user-friendly interfaces. Another example is Nemo, which introduced a “yield trading” market and a points reward system in its new interface – essentially allowing users to speculate on yield rates and earn loyalty points, a creative twist on typical yield farming. We also see structured yield products: for instance, MovEX and others have discussed structured vaults that automatically rotate funds between strategies, giving users packaged investment products (akin to DeFi ETFs or tranches). These are in development and represent the next generation of yield farming, where complexity (like strategy hopping) is abstracted and offered as a single product.

New Financial Instruments & Partnerships: The Sui community and its partners are actively building entirely new DeFi primitives that could define the next phase of growth. One high-profile upcoming project is Graviton, which raised $50M in a Series A (led by a16z and Pantera) to create a modular trading, lending, and cross-margining platform on Sui. Graviton is often compared to dYdX – aiming to onboard professional traders with a full-suite decentralized trading experience (perpetuals, margin trading, lending markets all under one roof). Such a well-funded initiative underlines the confidence in Sui’s DeFi potential and promises a new primitive: a one-stop, high-performance DeFi “super app” on Sui. In addition, real-world finance is intersecting with Sui: the Sui Foundation has fostered partnerships like xMoney/xPortal to launch a crypto-powered MasterCard for retail users, which would allow spending Sui-based assets in everyday purchases. This kind of CeFi–DeFi bridge (essentially bringing DeFi liquidity to point-of-sale) could be transformative if it gains traction. On the institutional side, 21Shares filed for a SUI exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US – while not a DeFi protocol, an ETF would give traditional investors exposure to Sui’s growth and indirectly to its DeFi economy.

The community and developer activity on Sui is another driving force for new primitives. Sui’s open-source Move ecosystem has grown so active that by mid-2025 Sui surpassed Solana and Near in weekly developer commits and repo forks, thanks to a surge in new tooling (e.g. Move SDKs, zk-proof integrations, cross-chain protocol development). This vibrant developer community is continually experimenting with ideas like on-chain options markets, decentralized insurance, and intent-based lending (some hackathon projects in 2025 tackled these areas). The results are starting to emerge: for example, Lotus Finance launched as a decentralized options AMM on Sui in Q2, and Turbos adopted decentralized front-end hosting (via Walrus) to push the envelope on censorship-resistant DeFi. Community-driven initiatives like these, alongside formal partnerships (e.g. Sui’s collaboration with Google Cloud to provide on-chain data indexing and AI inference tools), create a fertile ground for novel protocols. We’re seeing DeFi primitives on Sui that integrate AI oracles for dynamic pricing, BTC staking services (SatLayer), and even cross-chain intents (the NEAR Intents integration can be seen as a primitive for cross-chain liquidity). Each adds a building block that future developers can combine into new financial products.

Summary: In 2025, Sui’s DeFi ecosystem is flourishing with innovation. The liquidity on Sui has reached multi-billion dollar levels, anchored by major DEXes and lenders, and bolstered by steady inflows and user growth. Through account abstraction and user-centric design, Sui has dramatically improved the DeFi user experience, attracting a broader audience. And with the next wave of primitives – from native stablecoins and BTC integration to advanced AMMs, perps, and real-world asset tokens – Sui is expanding what’s possible in decentralized finance. Key protocols and community efforts are driving this evolution: Cetus and Bluefin advancing DEX tech, Suilend and others expanding lending into new asset classes, Bucket, Agora, Ondo bringing novel assets on-chain, and many more. High-profile partnerships (with infrastructure providers, TradFi institutions, and cross-chain networks) further amplify Sui’s momentum. All these elements point to Sui solidifying its position as a leading DeFi hub by 2025 – one characterized by deep liquidity, seamless usability, and relentless innovation in financial primitives.

Sources:

• Sui Foundation – Sui Q2 2025 DeFi Roundup (July 15, 2025)
• Sui Foundation – NEAR Intents Brings Lightning-Fast Cross-chain Swaps to Sui (July 17, 2025)
• Sui Foundation – Sui to Support sBTC and Stacks (BTCfi Use Cases) (May 1, 2025)
• Sui Foundation – All About Account Abstraction (Oct 4, 2023)
• Ainvest News – Sui Network TVL Surpasses $1.4B Driven by DeFi Protocols (Jul 14, 2025)
• Ainvest News – Sui DeFi TVL Surges 480% to $1.8B... (Jul 12, 2025)
• Suipiens (Sui community) – tBTC Integration Brings Bitcoin Liquidity to Sui (Jul 17, 2025)
• Suipiens – Inside Suilend: Sui’s Leading Lending Platform (Jul 3, 2025)
• The Defiant – Ondo to Bring RWA-Backed Stablecoins onto Sui (Feb 7, 2024)
• Official Sui Documentation – Intro to Sui: User Experience (account abstraction features)