Sui’s Valuation Puzzle: Growth Potential vs. Market Realities

From CoinShares Research Blog by Max Shannon

Sui has established itself as one of the most performant and widely adopted blockchains in the space, with its closest competitors being Solana and Base. High-performance Layer-1s (L1s) have broadly similar architectures, although differ slightly under the hood. But all have the same goal — to be the fastest and cheapest, with the best user experience — which, ultimately, is why the key differentiator lies in achieving scale and adoption. Sui appears to have the winning foothold in the Sui-Sei-Aptos battle currently, although outperforming Solana and Base over the long term remains a significant challenge.

Sui’s token has demonstrated relative resilience over the past three months, experiencing the smallest drawdown among its closest Alt-L1 peers. This suggests a degree of market confidence in Sui’s prospects. Supporting this sentiment, Sui has outperformed its competitors in key blockchain metrics:

Sui has also established a wider foundation of financial applications that arguably leads to more stability as an ecosystem. However, TVL (akin to AUM) denominated in their respective tokens shows Sui’s declining since September 2024 (although this has recently reversed); whereas Aptos and Sei have had continued increases. This is not a good sign for Sui, per se, and raises concerns if not corrected over the long term as it’s a measure of liquidity, sentiment, and future activity. However, this trend has reversed since last month, and in Sui’s case specifically, it might be token holders removing Sui from on-chain to sell, given the large run-up in price, prior to its ATH.

Valuation

From a valuation perspective, Sui has corrected from its Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) peak of approximately $52 billion to around $32 billion. Despite this decline, Sui still trades at a premium relative to Solana, with a Price/Fees multiple of 636x, compared to Solana’s 67x.

Summary

While Sui presents a compelling case relative to Sei and Aptos in terms of adoption and valuation, its ability to challenge Solana and Base over the long term remains uncertain. The latter benefit from increasing network effects, brand recognition, decentralisation, marketing momentum, and a large community that believes in the roadmap — all of which contribute to their continued dominance. That said, among its closest Alt-L1 competitors, Sui currently stands out as the most attractive option from both an adoption and valuation perspective.