SUI's Explosive DEX Volume and Layer 1 Dominance: Why SUI is Outperforming Competitors in DeFi Infrastructure and User Adoption

In the rapidly evolving landscape of decentralized finance (DeFi), SUI has emerged as a formidable contender, leveraging its Layer 1 technological innovations and strategic ecosystem developments to carve out a unique position. Despite a challenging 2025 marked by a 67.3% price decline, SUI's DeFi infrastructure has demonstrated explosive growth, with decentralized exchange (DEX) volume surging to $408 million in a single 24-hour period in Q4 2025. This momentum, coupled with a 10x increase in total value locked (TVL) to $2.63 billion since early 2024, underscores SUI's potential to outpace competitors like Solana and Ethereum in key DeFi metrics.

SUI's DeFi Infrastructure: A New Paradigm

SUI's rise is driven by its native DEX, SuiDEX, which launched in Q4 2025 with features designed to address liquidity fragmentation and enhance user experience. SuiDEX's cross-chain interoperability allows seamless token swaps between Sui, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana, a critical advantage in an ecosystem where liquidity is often siloed. This interoperability is paired with a hybrid liquidity model that combines automated market maker (AMM) pools for instant swaps with intelligent order routing to optimize trade execution(https://chainwire.org/2025/10/06/hyperliquid-and-aster-start-the-next-era-sui-defi-ecosystem-expands-with-native-dex/). Such innovations position SUI to attract both retail and institutional users seeking efficient, low-latency trading environments.

Moreover, SUI's TVL growth-up 220% in 2024-2025 reflects strong demand for its DeFi protocols. While Solana's DEX volume dominated Q4 2025 with $100 billion monthly activity, SUI's TVL growth rate outpaced Ethereum's and Solana's, signaling a shift in capital allocation toward high-potential, scalable blockchains. This trend is further amplified by SUI's developer incentives and staking modules, which are expected to drive user adoption in 2026.

Layer 1 Advantages: Scalability and Security

SUI's technological edge lies in its object-centric architecture, which enables parallel transaction processing and theoretical throughput of 300,000 transactions per second (TPS). This dwarfs Solana's 65,000 TPS(https://learn.backpack.exchange/articles/solana-vs-ethereum) and Ethereum's 15-45 TPS, making SUI particularly suited for high-frequency DeFi applications and real-time use cases like gaming. Unlike Solana's hybrid Proof-of-History (PoH)/Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, SUI's design allows simple transactions to bypass full consensus, reducing latency and costs.

Security is another cornerstone of SUI's appeal. The blockchain's use of the Move programming language-a resource-oriented language developed by former Meta engineers-minimizes smart contract vulnerabilities by enforcing explicit ownership and resource constraints(https://threesigma.xyz/blog/ecosystem/sui-vs-solana-guide). In contrast, Solana's Rust/BPF ecosystem, while mature, requires developers to navigate complex account management and execution logic(https://threesigma.xyz/blog/ecosystem/sui-vs-solana-guide). Ethereum, though dominant in DeFi depth, lags in scalability and faces rising gas fees, which SUI's low-cost model directly addresses(https://medium.com/bcgontech/mapping-the-layer-1-landscape-benchmarking-blockchain-projects-across-key-themes-18fd71a7e946).

Challenges and Opportunities

Despite its strengths, SUI faces headwinds. Its ecosystem remains less mature than Solana's, with monthly active users (830,000) trailing Solana's 6.7 million. Additionally, the 2025 price crash highlights market volatility, as investor caution shifted capital toward established networks like Solana and Ethereum. However, SUI's focus on interoperability and developer incentives-such as dynamic APY liquidity pools-positions it to capture market share in 2026.

The launch of SuiDEX's cross-chain capabilities and staking modules could further accelerate adoption, particularly as DeFi users seek platforms that balance scalability with security.

Conclusion

SUI's explosive DEX volume and Layer 1 innovations position it as a disruptive force in DeFi. While Solana's dominance in monthly trading volumes and Ethereum's deep liquidity pools(https://medium.com/bcgontech/mapping-the-layer-1-landscape-benchmarking-blockchain-projects-across-key-themes-18fd71a7e946) remain formidable, SUI's combination of high throughput, cross-chain interoperability, and Move-based security offers a compelling value proposition. As the DeFi landscape matures, SUI's ability to scale efficiently and attract developers will be critical to sustaining its growth. For investors, the blockchain's 10x TVL increase and strategic ecosystem rollouts suggest a strong foundation for long-term outperformance.