Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News

On November 14, SUI broke through 3.5 USDT, setting a new historical price high; Bitwise will launch the Aptos Staking ETP on the Swiss Stock Exchange; the Movement mainnet is about to go live… Beyond EVM, Solana, and BTC, a vibrant new ecosystem is rising, and the "Move public chain" is gradually gaining momentum.

Sui, Aptos, and Movement are often discussed together because they are all public chain platforms that support smart contracts written in the Move language, known as the "Move public chain." Sui and Aptos are Layer 1 public chains, with most team members coming from the blockchain project Diem/Libra (where the Move language was born) that was forced to halt due to regulatory pressure from Facebook (now Meta). Both have successfully raised hundreds of millions of dollars and have launched their mainnets, ranking high in market capitalization; Movement is a Layer 2 built on Ethereum, aiming to bring the Move language into the ETH ecosystem. Movement has raised tens of millions of dollars and is currently in the testnet phase.

Despite all being "Move public chains," the differences among the three are much greater than most people imagine. The author holds SUI and APT and is deeply involved in both ecosystems. As Move Chains gradually gain traction, this article aims to provide readers with some insights that may have gone unnoticed, helping everyone in their research and judgment.

A Brief Discussion on Technical Differences

This article mainly approaches from a non-technical perspective, but it also briefly discusses the technical differences among the chains. The well-known market maker research department DWF Ventures recently published a "comparative analysis" of these three chains, listing incorrect facts regarding their technology. If institutions are making such mistakes, it shows that there is considerable room for improvement in understanding the technology of Move public chains.

The architectures of Aptos and Sui are quite unique; strictly speaking, they cannot even be considered a "blockchain," but rather a "Directed Acyclic Graph" (DAG), which is a special data structure composed of "checkpoints." Movement, on the other hand, is consistent with conventional chains, consisting of blocks in a linear chain. Other well-known projects that also adopt a DAG architecture include kaspa (KAS), which is favored by PoW miners and claims to revive the original ideals of Bitcoin. DWF Ventures mistakenly regarded Aptos as a linear chain in the above image—Aptos was indeed a linear chain when it first launched, but later transitioned to a DAG.

Transaction relationships in a DAG

Differences beyond architecture also include consensus mechanisms and different implementations of parallel transactions.

Both Sui and Aptos use a DAG-based BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus, but the specific mechanisms for leader selection differ, while Movement employs the Snowman consensus of the Avalanche protocol. Different consensus mechanisms lead to different TTF (transaction confirmation times); currently, Sui's Mysticeti consensus is the fastest, capable of confirming transactions in 0.5 seconds. Aptos is set to upgrade to RAPTR consensus, which is also expected to perform well.

For parallel transactions, both Aptos and Movement use the Block-STM parallel engine, which is an optimistic parallelization mechanism that assumes all transactions can be processed in parallel and re-executes in case of erroneous transactions. Sui, however, employs a "state access" method, categorizing, sorting, and confirming transactions without conflicts before execution.

Although they all use the Move language, the Move language has evolved into two major variants: Sui Move and Aptos Move. Movement theoretically supports both, but primarily focuses on Aptos Move.

User Experience

Speed and Fees

For high-performance public chains, speed and low cost are core competitive advantages. In actual use, the speed differences are almost imperceptible, with interactions being nearly instantaneous.

In terms of fees, all types of interactions on Aptos maintain negligible costs, while Sui incurs higher gas costs for certain transactions (as shown in the image below, receiving rewards on Navi costs a $0.14 fee). High gas fees are also related to the quality of contract code, but it is clear that Aptos has more controllable overall costs.

Stability

Stability is another important consideration—no one wants to use a blockchain that frequently goes down for high-frequency financial activities. Since its mainnet launch, Sui has never gone down and has successfully withstood the test of massive transactions involving inscriptions and runes. However, Aptos did experience a brief halt in block production last October.

Hardware Wallet Compatibility

I store a significant amount of tokens in a hardware wallet, and during use, I found that:

Sui's compatibility with Ledger is poor; in the early days, every time I opened the app, I had to reset the blind signing option, and the frequency of software updates and maintenance was very low. Additionally, none of Sui's mainstream mobile wallets support hardware wallets!

In contrast, Aptos has good compatibility and maintenance frequency with Ledger, and the official team’s Petra wallet not only supports multiple hardware wallets but also features a dedicated animation for signing—attention to detail is impressive.

Regarding wallet experience, I believe Aptos's official Petra wallet > Sui's official Sui Wallet (from the perspective of balance change simulation, multi-account switching, and other functionalities).

Observations on wallet experience also lead to the conclusion that Sui seems less concerned about Crypto Native users, having not invested significant resources to meet our needs, while Aptos has provided me with a better experience. So, what kind of users does Sui care about? I believe it is focused on the narrative of "Mass Adoption" and "incremental users," primarily promoting the creation of Sui wallets through social accounts like Google, Twitch, and Facebook, aiming to attract Web2 users to expand the user base rather than competing for existing crypto users.

Is this consideration good or bad? It's actually hard to judge. Solana first captured the existing Crypto Native users and then gradually moved towards "Mass Adoption," and it has executed this strategy very successfully.

Team Dynamics

From the perspective of a non-technical onlooker, Sui indeed has more innovation, while Aptos has a somewhat "imitative" tone:

Initially, Aptos was based on the code foundation of the Diem project, using an address model as a chain. Sui later launched its mainnet, also from the Diem team, but redesigned many key components and proposed a new solution: Sui is an object-centric DAG. Aptos later also transitioned to an object model and DAG.

Sui was the first to provide token incentives to attract TVL for ecological DeFi projects, leading to a significant increase in TVL. Aptos later also began to subsidize ecological projects with tokens.

The PoW gameplay first appeared on the PoS chain of Solana, and after Sui introduced imitations, Aptos officially began promoting its own ecological imitations.

Sui developer Mysten Labs used the logo shown above for two years, while Aptos Labs recently adopted its latest logo:

This may not be called "similar" … but rather a sense of CP (couple pairing) between competitors.

Another aspect of team dynamics is the scale; Aptos's testnet provided a large airdrop, which was many people's first pot of gold, while Sui's testnet did not have an airdrop but instead offered token subscription quotas through community lotteries.

The most prominent feature of the Movement team currently is its strong ability to manage the community and create "hype" for its project. Even before the mainnet launch, they have convinced the crypto community that they will be "the next big thing."

Research and Engineering

The academic research achievements of Sui developer Mysten Labs are outstanding, with 5 recent papers accepted by the top conference in the computer industry, ACM CCS. In terms of engineering capabilities, in addition to the well-known Sui public chain, they have also launched a decentralized storage protocol called Walrus based on Sui and are preparing to integrate with the SCION network standard. Furthermore, Sui is also preparing to implement transaction sending via radio waves without a network.

Sui founder and CEO received the ACM Software System Award in 2012 for contributions to LLVM.

Aptos Labs also possesses top-tier research and engineering capabilities; a simple example is that Aptos's Block-STM parallel engine has been integrated and adopted by several major projects, including Starknet, Polygon, Monad, and Movement.

It is undeniable that the comprehensive foundation of the Movement team is weaker than the above two teams. However, in today's meme supercycle, the project's vibe may be more important than its fundamentals.

Ecosystem and Community

Sui ecosystem projects, source: DefiLlama

Objectively speaking, the richness and development status of the current Sui ecosystem projects are better than those of the Aptos ecosystem, with a higher DeFi TVL. Aptos's TVL has seen significant growth recently, but it is relatively homogeneous, mainly coming from lending protocols that receive foundation grants and APT token incentives. Earlier this year, I experienced a situation in a certain Aptos ecosystem project's Discord where I was the only one speaking, and my questions to the team in English went unanswered for 3 to 4 days.

Aptos ecosystem projects, source: DefiLlama

The Sui community is also generally more active than Aptos (perhaps influenced by the strong coin price), and it seems that the slogan "No Airdrop, No Community" has failed. The Movement community is comparable to Monad's cult, with "gmove" appearing everywhere, giving this yet-to-launch project a leading mindshare.

It is also worth mentioning that Sui and Aptos seem to be "old rivals," often "working against each other" in selecting collaborative ecosystem projects. The mainstream cross-chain bridge in the Sui ecosystem is Wormhole, while Aptos certainly will not choose the same but will collaborate with LayerZero. Sui Network introduced the native stablecoin USDC, while Aptos's first collaboration for a native stablecoin was indeed USDT.

Moreover, Aptos and Sui have different attitudes towards Movement. Aptos is more open and has expressed welcome for Movement to grow the Move language ecosystem; almost all Aptos ecosystem projects I have used are preparing to launch on the Movement mainnet. In contrast, Sui is relatively more closed off; co-founders have previously stated that L2 is meaningless, and most ecosystem projects are built only on the Sui chain.

Movement's co-founder has criticized "exclusive protocols" in a post on X, seemingly implying something.

Although Movement is still in the testnet phase, it already has over 60 apps and millions of active addresses, making its ecosystem effect significant.

Common Issues

Currently, the Move ecosystem does not have a significant wealth effect for retail investors. Although there are token subsidies from foundation grants, interest subsidies are often mined and sold by high-net-worth whales, making it difficult for retail investors to be interested in interest rates of over ten percent. There is a lack of wealth creation stories like the JTO airdrop and Bonk meme coin in the Solana ecosystem.

Specifically, Aptos is more likely to address this issue, as most projects in the ecosystem have not yet issued tokens. Recommended reading: Gold Mining Manual | Airdrops and High-Yield Opportunities Not to Miss on Aptos

On the other hand, third-party ecosystem projects on Sui are gradually issuing tokens, but the airdrop ratios are not high. Moreover, the largest lending protocol on Sui, Navi (which has now been surpassed by Suilend, which is preparing for a December airdrop), launched a points leaderboard earlier this year, announcing that points would play a key role in the "upcoming" token airdrop after the token issuance—however, the project has not conducted an airdrop since its token issuance in February.

The tokens launched by the developers' own projects (Deepbook, Sui NS) follow a model of broad airdrops to the community, aiming to raise coin prices, as they have to personally step in to improve the "wealth effect" of the Sui chain due to the underperformance of ecosystem projects.

Specifically regarding the meme wealth effect, both sides still need to work hard. The FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) of SUI is approximately 1/3 and 1/10 of SOL's, while the largest meme market cap on Sui is only 1/20 of that on Solana, and the largest meme GUI on Aptos is only 1/100 of WIF's market cap.

Although there are various issues, looking long-term, the future of Move public chains is bright. Recommended reading: Why Developers Bet on Move Public Chains?

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