SUI vs Aptos: Who Will Lead 2025’s Crypto Bull Run

Take a look at Sui. It has pumped 136% over 3 months and 318% over 12 months. And now take a look at Aptos -12% over 3 months and up 0.6% over 12 months.

Sui is giving Solana a run for the top Alt Layer 1 and we strongly believe Sui could be the Solana of 2025 Bullrun. But why are we comparing Sui and Aptos right now? Both Sui and Aptos have Diem founders from that failed FB project. Both use the Move programming language. Both are liked and respected.

So why is Sui doing so much better than Aptos? If you missed the Sui train could Aptos be the one for you? And how high will both of them go  Let’s find out together.

Basic Comparisons of the Blockchains

• Mainnet Launch

Sui’s mainnet launch was in May 2023. As a result, it’s still going through its first bull market now. And it’s doing tremendously. Since the mainnet launch. Early holders are up 226% in that time.

Aptos launched in October 2022. So this is Aptos’ first bull market as well. But they had the added challenge of launching during the last bear market. Its holders have seen a more modest 20% ROI in that time. From its bear market low of $3.21, it’s up a much more impressive 170%.

Both are high-performing blockchains that take advantage of the Move programming language. Move is an object-oriented language for blockchain use, especially gaming and NFTs.

• Execution and Consensus

Both chains use parallel execution to increase the scalability of the chain. One difference is Aptos uses sequential transactions too. 

The simplest way to explain the difference is both can open up an extra cashier at the market to speed up paying for your groceries. On Sui, they always have 6 registers open because parallel execution is open all the time. On Aptos, they have the potential to open 6 registers. But they might only have 2 open so its Mempool could get backed up and slow down the processing time or scale up slower than Sui’s chain. Sui has a mempool, too. Just like Bitcoin does. Here it’s for all the transactions to sit and wait for a validator to confirm the transaction.

But Sui with its new Mysticeti upgrade is just a little bit faster. Single object transactions are moved through a different faster consensus. Like in our market example, opening up a line and register just for people with 6 or fewer items to pay fast and get out of there. Both chains run very well with maybe just a slight edge to Sui like 52-48.

Ecosystem

At the moment, Sui lists 86 ecosystem projects while Aptos has 187. And yet Aptos as a token is not performing as well as Sui. Why is that? On the one hand, having more in the ecosystem is a good sign of adoption and that what you have is working well for others.

But more isn’t always better. Better is better. So let’s see what some of the top performers are in the ecosystems.

• Sui

Sui has a diverse ecosystem but it’s best known so far for DeFi and gaming. We covered extensively the rise of gaming apps and platforms on Sui like Ambrus Studios and its E4C multi-platform platform. And also the industry’s most popular handheld gaming device the SuiPlay0x1. Sui also has Walrus for data storage and SuiDEPIN for DePIN infrastructure.

In the growing area of AI, there is the SuiAI launchpad to launch new agents but not a ton of activity yet. It’s just getting started. In DeFi, Sui is #8 of all chains in TVL at just under $2 billion. Navi Protocol is one of the leaders and the place where you can get native USDC on Sui.

• Aptos

Aptos’ largest category in its ecosystem is infrastructure. This is a sign of how much it cares about having quality developer tools. This is something both ecosystems have in common. The overall most valuable project on Aptos after Aptos itself is the Bonk memecoin at $2.6 billion. Aptos-specific apps and protocols are mostly much, much smaller. And in that smallness is opportunity.

In AI and AI Agents, Aptos looks to be ahead of Sui in development here. But both projects are moving fast to get working agents and infrastructure into the market.

In DeFi, Aptos is #11 only 3 spots behind Sui in TVL at just over $1 billion. But that $1 billion is half the total TVL that Sui has. DEX and lender Aries Markets dominate Aptos’ TVL taking more than ⅓ of it. Aries pays 10.6% on USDT deposits and the Aptos chain supports native USDT. That’s a pretty good deal for USDT holders. Sui does not support USDT but it does support USDC.

Today, if you want more established ecosystem projects at larger values, Sui has more of them. Aptos has more small-cap opportunities right now.

Tokenomics

The first major difference in tokenomics is that Aptos has a potentially infinite supply. That’s always an issue to us although it rarely nukes your portfolio like Terra Luna did a couple of years ago. Sui has a total and maximum supply of 10 billion.

Around 50.5% of the total supply of 1.13 billion or 572 million Aptos are in circulation now. That’s an OK number but after almost 3 years of mainnet, we think this number should be higher. Sui has only 30% or 3 billion out of 10 billion tokens in circulation. Its mainnet has been live for 18 months but we also think this circulating supply is too low.

Both do monthly token unlocks. With Aptos, it’s ~1.98% of the market cap and with Sui it’s  2.66% of the market cap.  Sui has ~20% for community and staking while Aptos has 50%. The overall edge would go to Aptos except for the potentially infinite supply. So we have to give the total tokenomics edge to Sui.

Conclusion

Although Sui wins the comparison by a little bit, both are well-run, well-formed, high-performance blockchains. The truth is the difference in their market values and performance should not be very much. Sui is at $13 billion while Aptos is at just under $5 billion. Both could easily become $100 billion projects. That is 20x for Aptos and 8-9x for Sui.  But with Aptos, you may need a little more patience to get there. We like both projects and expect them to keep growing over the next few cycles.

Disclaimer

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