L1 network Sui is in the flush of a bullish trend. Its native SUI token has delivered gains of more than 50% for the month-to-date, making it one of the best performers amongst top-10 tokens. In one 24-hour period this week, trading volumes surged by more than 30%.

What's rekindled investor interest? Recent events like the soft launch of a Bitcoin-linked Sui asset called sBTC may have helped. Asset manager 21 Shares also announced this week that it plans to launch a SUI ETF – just days after Grayscale unveiled its Sui Trust for accredited investors. Sui’s May token unlock also breaks today, releasing 88.3 million SUI tokens worth an estimated $317 million.

Underpinning everything, however, is Sui's unique approach to decentralized applications (dApps). The L1's architecture allows developers to blend the benefits of Web3 with the simplicity of Web2, weaving in familiar ecommerce onboarding steps that make DeFi services easier to use.

Five dApps account for the lion's share of network TVL, but investors are betting Sui's competitive advantage will make it bigger than the sum of its parts. These are the dApps Sui users are currently flocking to.

Suilend

Sui's number one dApp by TVL is Suilend, a crypto lending platform. It achieved a TVL of $200 million six-months after launch.

Aiming to fend off close-competitor NAVI Protocol, Suilend is now building a liquid staking protocol called SpringSui, alongside a reported Sui-based NFT project. In December 2024 the project launched its own native token called SEND. TVL at time of writing was $399 million.

NAVI Protocol

Sui's number two dApp is NAVI Protocol, another crypto lending and liquid staking service. The Project’s ambition is to become the go-to lending and borrowing platform for Move-based smart contract platforms.

Only available on Sui, NAVI acquired liquid staking service provider Volo last year and launched a governance token called NAVX. Since launch, NAVX's market cap has grown to almost $25 million. NAVI's overall TVL currently sits at $347 million.

Cetus Protocol

Number three Cetus Protocol is a decentralized exchange (DEX) geared to the requirements of Move-based smart contract blockchains. The platform uses a concentrated liquidity protocol that lets liquidity providers improve trading efficiency by deploying liquidity within a set price range.

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The protocol's native token is CETUS, used primarily to incentivize liquidity providers to supply tokens on the network. Users can stake their CETUS tokens to obtain a non-transferrable governance token called xCETUS.

Scallop Lend

In fourth place is Scallop Lend, a decentralized lending and borrowing platform that allows users to tokenize debt in the form of Scallop Market Coins or sCoins.

Scallop Lend's SCA utility token is used mainly to encourage  liquidity. Users can lock their SCA tokens and receive a governance token called veSCA. It’s current TVL is over $150 million.

Haedal

Number five Sui dApp Haedal is a liquid staking protocol that allows traders to use their SUI tokens to gain yields and take part in the governance and ongoing decentralization of the Sui blockchain.

The protocol's yield-bearing token is called haToken. It is minted when users stake SUI or WAL (native token of the Walrus Protocol, another Sui dApp) using Haedal's liquid staking infra. It represents the user's ownership and share of Haedal's total liquid staking value.

After staking, users also receive Haedal staked SUI (haSUI) which are minted as receipt tokens that can be used as liquidity in various governance activities, as well as an instrument to earn additional yields.

Haedal is on the up. At time of writing its TVL was over $144.5 million, rising nearly 8% over the previous seven days, while its recently launched haeVault DeFi vault passed the $6 million TVL milestone on March 31st.

The takeaway

Originally hyped as ‘the next Solana' before investor enthusiasm waned, Sui re-emerged this month as a capital inflow magnet.

Last year its TVL ballooned from $59 million to over $1.1 billion, while the price of SUI surged more than 400%. Figures from DeFiLlama put its current TVL at $1.23 billion — and the direction of travel points to further gains.

With ongoing institutional adoption and steady expansion of the Sui dApps ecosystem, the L1's outlook looks upbeat. As the network's monthly token unlock schedule rolls out in 2025, look for signals of  further network growth and potential upside for its utility token.