Author: Patrick Bush, VanEck

Translation: Alex Liu, Foresight News

We compared Sui and Aptos in terms of blockchain performance, scalability, ecosystem, and transaction advantages, and predicted that by the end of 2025, the price of SUI will reach $16, and APT will reach $22.

Please note that VanEck holds Sui (SUI) and Aptos (APT).

Sui vs. Aptos: Origins and Overview

Previously, we discussed the potential of Ethereum and Solana to attract billions of users into the crypto space. While both ecosystems are highly attractive, they represent early blockchain technology. Since their inception, a new generation of blockchains has emerged to break through the limitations of these systems, including Aptos and Sui, founded by former members of Facebook's blockchain project Diem.

Diem attempted to create a stablecoin payment system for Facebook's social media platform but was shelved due to regulatory pressure. However, its technological experiments led to significant breakthroughs in the blockchain field. The most important legacy of Diem is the Move smart contract programming language—developed based on Rust, which is used by 4.3 million developers globally and is the third fastest-growing language, optimized to address the shortcomings of early smart contract languages like Ethereum's Solidity and Cardano's Haskell. Both Aptos and Sui leverage Move to build a faster, safer, and more intuitive development environment for developers. Move also helps both virtual machines (VMs) achieve faster transaction confirmation speeds (the time users receive confirmation) and higher throughput (the volume of transactions processed by the system in a given time). The potential of Move is so great that the total market capitalization of Move-based blockchains skyrocketed from about $5 billion to $22 billion within a year.

Core Comparison Dimensions

1. Blockchain performance and scalability
2. Ecosystem
3. Transaction experience
4. Token economics
5. Valuation models
6. 2025 price predictions
7. Conclusion and investment risks

The size of the crypto developer community is only 1/1000 of JavaScript

Data source: Electric Capital, Slash Data (as of 2024/12/19)

The importance of the Move language lies in providing a more user-friendly entry point for developers. The crypto developer community is extremely small—Meta (Facebook) has more full-time developers than the entire crypto industry. By offering a more user-friendly and efficient language, Move is expected to attract a broader developer community, fostering experimentation and innovation. This innovation is crucial for uncovering "killer applications" that drive mass adoption. We view blockchain as an innovation experimentation platform, with its high valuation stemming from its ability to nurture applications for hundreds of millions of users. Since no one knows how the next breakthrough application will emerge, attracting as many developers as possible to experiment is particularly critical.

Both Aptos and Sui combine the Move virtual machine with advanced consensus mechanisms to ensure efficient transaction validation on the network. This cutting-edge combination of virtual machines and consensus protocols forms the technical foundation, providing performance that surpasses previous blockchain systems. Before innovations like Solana's Firedancer proved their limitations, Sui and Aptos represented the pinnacle of blockchain technology.

Aptos set a record of 326 million transactions in a single day (13,300 TPS) on 2024/10/18

Daily transaction peaks of various blockchains Data source: Artemis XYZ (as of 2024/12/19)

Sui and Aptos provide key blockchain technologies capable of serving hundreds of millions of users. Both outperform Solana (which sacrifices complexity for scalability) and Ethereum (which sacrifices flexibility for ecosystem richness) in simplifying development processes and ensuring security. Tactically, Sui and Aptos offer a better experience for current core crypto use cases (speculation and value transfer); strategically, they lay the foundation for non-speculative applications such as AI agents, social media, and cloud services. While the forms of future phenomenal applications remain unknown, Sui and Aptos have already demonstrated strong potential to attract the next generation of blockchain users.

But what exactly makes these systems so exceptional? Which one is superior?

Sui vs. Aptos: Blockchain Performance and Scalability

Despite sharing the Move language gene, the blockchain architectures of the two reflect different design philosophies. Each network employs a customized version of the Move language, making unique optimizations for transaction processing.

When a transaction is sent to the blockchain, it carries information about the database (i.e., "state") that needs to be modified. Blockchain engineers refer to these database updates as "state changes." Most blockchains use a hierarchical validation mechanism: a single validator acts as a temporary "leader," responsible for receiving transactions, validating their validity (checking signatures, preventing double-spending), ordering execution, and updating the state, with the generated transaction block broadcast to other validating nodes. When more than two-thirds (66%) of validators reach consensus, the blockchain proceeds to process the next block.

Blockchain architecture can be divided into two core components:

• 1 Transaction processing and block construction
• Validating transaction authenticity
• Ensuring sufficient account balances
• Executing smart contracts
• Updating the blockchain ledger
• 2 Network communication and state synchronization
• Broadcasting transaction blocks to the entire network
• Synchronizing ledger changes to ensure all validators have consistent states
• Handling conflicts in ledger reconciliation

To increase throughput, one must either increase block size or optimize data processing efficiency. Sui and Aptos break through technical boundaries in different ways through their customized Move language.

Blockchain transaction throughput = Block size × Block processing speed

Both are committed to optimizing data processing scale and propagation speed. We reveal their respective advantages and trade-offs by analyzing the design differences in their "transaction processing and block construction" phases.

Blockchain Technology Analogy: Restaurant Operations Optimization

• Blockchain = Restaurant: Provides infrastructure and environment
• Users = Customers: Interact with the system through "ordering" (transactions)
• Transactions = Orders: Specific requests initiated by users
• On-chain applications = Waitstaff: Relay orders to the kitchen (validators) and return processing results
• Leader validator = Kitchen: Processes orders (validates and executes transactions) and produces results (state changes)
• State changes = Dishes: Results of completed transactions

In this analogy, the technological improvements of Sui and Aptos are akin to optimizing restaurant operations—accelerating kitchen efficiency, enhancing waitstaff coordination, and ensuring accurate and rapid order processing.

Ethereum: A Slow-Paced Restaurant

Ethereum employs a single-threaded state update mechanism, requiring a long time to accumulate transactions to form a block. Its block size is small, operations are limited, and transactions must be processed serially—even if they involve different state parts, they must queue. This combination of small blocks, low-frequency updates, and serial execution leads to low throughput and severe scalability issues.

Analogy: Ethereum is like a restaurant with only one chef. Customers (users) submit orders through waitstaff (applications), and the orders are compiled into a limited-capacity list. Orders that do not pay a sufficiently high "tip" (Gas fee) will be excluded. After about 12 seconds, the order list is sent to the "head chef" (validator) for processing in order of tip amount. Due to limited capacity, severe congestion inevitably occurs during peak times. Users complain about long waits and resent paying high fees without receiving service.

Ethereum restaurant: Even if orders have no conflicts, they must be processed one by one.

Source: VanEck Research (2024/12/19)

Sui and Aptos: Fast-Food Restaurants Introducing Parallel Processing

By allowing non-conflicting transactions to be processed in parallel, both achieve significant breakthroughs. For example, simple payments or transactions using different applications can be executed simultaneously. While chains like Solana and Monad also support parallel processing, Sui and Aptos currently have the most advanced designs.

Analogy: Adding multiple chefs to the kitchen. However, due to equipment limitations, when multiple tables order pizza simultaneously, the oven's capacity may not be sufficient, causing some orders to still queue. In the blockchain scenario, this is similar to traders competing for the best price on the same DEX—conflicts must be resolved, and Sui and Aptos adopt different solutions.

Parallel processing enhances throughput.

Source: VanEck Research (2024/12/19)

Sui: "Delicate Cuisine" with Static Parallelism

Using a "static parallel" mechanism similar to Solana, transactions must declare the state parts they will read and write in advance. Sui uses this to determine conflicts and resolves them in order of fees, receipt times, etc.

Analogy: In the "Sui restaurant," waitstaff (applications) break down the kitchen equipment involved in the orders. If two orders require the same equipment (like a pizza oven), the system will pre-determine the processing order. For example:

• Table A orders a white pizza
• Table B orders a black pizza (signature dish)
• Table C orders salmon

Orders A and B conflict due to sharing the oven, so the system prioritizes processing order B, while order C can be processed immediately as it uses an available grill.

Sui's conflict prediction mechanism.

Source: VanEck Research (2024/12/19)

Aptos: "French Cuisine" with Dynamic Parallelism

Using a "dynamic parallel" mechanism similar to Monad, it assumes conflicts are rare and detects conflicts in real-time during transaction processing. If a conflict is found (such as multiple transactions competing for the same asset), it rolls back and reorders.

Analogy: In the "Aptos restaurant," the waitstaff do not need to predict the usage of kitchen equipment. Orders go directly to the "kitchen manager" (scheduler), who assumes no conflicts and processes them immediately. If a conflict actually occurs (such as multiple customers vying for flounder), cooking must stop and rescheduling is required. Although this may seem inefficient, the Aptos kitchen's rapid processing capability usually absorbs this loss.

Aptos Dynamic Conflict Resolution

Source: VanEck Research (2024/12/23)

Deep Impacts of the Two Models

Aptos' Developer Friendliness

• Does not require declaration of state dependencies, reducing development complexity
• Suitable for applications that require flexibility (e.g., conditional order execution)

Sui's Execution Efficiency

• Preemptively resolves conflicts, reducing computational resource consumption
• Performs excellently in high-competition scenarios (e.g., DEX arbitrage)
• However, may lead to some states being monopolized due to "write locks"

Extreme Scenario Testing

• Aptos may encounter scheduling bottlenecks during high conflicts (following the Kingman formula: as system load approaches capacity, even a slight increase in traffic can cause exponential delays)
• Sui's write locks may lead to inefficient resource utilization

Sui's Unique Advantages: Local Fee Market and Service Level Agreements

Local Fee Market

• Different applications can independently price gas fees (e.g., Aftermath Finance's SUI/USDC pool can raise prices independently)
• In contrast to Aptos/Ethereum's global fee market (where congestion in a single application leads to a rise in gas fees across the network)

Analogy: In the Sui restaurant, each cooking area prices according to demand (raising prices for sea urchin pasta does not affect steak burritos), while Aptos has a unified global pricing (a surge in demand for ceviche ice cream causes the price of red snapper pizza to rise).

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

• Validators can commit to daily transaction delays and pricing
• Ensures enterprise-level applications are not disturbed by other on-chain activities

Finality Time: Sui Has the Advantage

Source: Circle, Project Documentation (2024/12/19)

For simple payment transactions, Sui achieves ultra-low latency and high throughput through two mechanisms:

• Fast Path: Bypasses the consensus mechanism, with delays as low as 300 milliseconds
• Pilot Fish: Validators can achieve nearly unlimited scalability by adding servers

Its technical foundation lies in the object-oriented state architecture—assets like USDC are held directly by users as independent objects (rather than Ethereum's contract accounting model). When two users transfer funds simultaneously, Sui can process them in parallel (modifying ownership of their respective objects), while Aptos/Solana must access the same smart contract serially.

Aptos' Response: Quorum Store

Enhancing throughput by optimizing the consensus process:

• Allows non-leader validators to participate in transaction propagation
• Leaders focus on block proposals and broadcasting
• May exacerbate scheduling challenges in high-conflict scenarios

Security Trade-offs

Sui omits the DAG certification step to enhance speed, which may make it more susceptible to network packet loss (e.g., if 5 out of 100 validators lose 1% of packets, it can significantly slow down). Additionally, the attack surface for malicious validators is larger than that of Aptos. Although major attacks on PoS systems remain a theoretical risk, this vulnerability may amplify as the ecosystem matures.

Ecosystem Status: Sui Currently Leads

Data Source: Artemis XYZ (2025/1/21)

Key Applications

• Sui: Lending protocols Suilend/Navi (TVL over $450 million), perpetual contracts BlueFin (daily trading volume of $250 million, ranked 7th across the chain)
• Aptos: Stablecoin/DEX protocol Thala (TVL $135 million)

Incentive Strategies and "Hired Capital" Risks

• Sui: Committed $157 million SUI (currently about $300 million) to incentivize the ecosystem in October 2023, estimated annual yield increase of 5.2%-10%
• Aptos: Offers 6.5%-20% APT rewards to attract liquidity, estimated annual incentive expenditure of $100 million

Both face the "hired capital" issue—users come solely for arbitrage rewards, raising doubts about ecosystem sustainability.

Developer and Community Activity

• Active Developers: Sui 280/week vs. Aptos 272/week (Ethereum 3300, Solana 1200)
• Google Search Popularity: Sui is 9 times that of Aptos, surpassing Solana for 17 days and Ethereum for 16 days in the past 90 days
• No truly differentiated successful applications have emerged yet (e.g., Sui's FanTV and Birds have low user numbers)

Transaction Experience: Sui is Superior

Sui has built a better system for traders, specifically reflected in:

Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTB)

• A single transaction can dynamically call up to 1024 instructions, making real-time decisions based on on-chain/off-chain data (e.g., DEX aggregators using ASIC/GPU to compute optimal paths).
• Surpasses Solana's account number limit (64 input accounts), supporting complex transactions (e.g., operating over 100 objects simultaneously).

Gas Fee Mechanism

• Sui: Validators set a base price, and users can add priority fees to jump the queue. It adopts a local fee market, with high-demand applications pricing independently (e.g., Aftermath Finance's SUI/USDC pool can raise prices independently).
• Aptos: Governance sets a base gas price, with fees fluctuating globally. There is no priority fee mechanism, leading to a rise in fees across the network in high-demand scenarios.

DeepBook Liquidity Layer

• A central limit order book (CLOB) built into the Sui chain, aggregating liquidity across the entire chain.
• Reduces DEX slippage and weakens the liquidity monopoly advantage of leading applications.

Impact:

• Market makers incur lower costs for updating quotes in Sui (updating thousands of orders in a single transaction).
• The price spread on Sui DEX may outperform Aptos, attracting more trading volume.

Token Economics Comparison

Unique Design:

• Sui Storage Fund: The network pays validators newly minted SUI to compensate for long-term storage costs, creating deflationary pressure on the token.
• APT Inflation and Destruction Balance: High transaction volumes may lead APT into deflation, but current annual inflation still exceeds the destruction amount.

Valuation Models and Price Predictions

Total Market Capitalization of Smart Contract Platforms (SCP)

• Expected to reach $11 trillion by the end of 2025 (currently $770 billion, +43%)
• 
• Based on the U.S. M2 money supply (expected to be $22.3 trillion in 2025, annual growth of 3.2%) regression analysis (R²=0.36)

Market Share of Move Ecosystem

• Currently 2.7% (Sui 2% + Aptos 0.7%) → 6.5% by 2025

Price Predictions

• SUI: 5.5% market share corresponds to a market cap of $61 billion, with a circulating supply of 3 billion → $16 (current price $3.75, +326%)
• APT: 1% market share corresponds to a market cap of $11 billion, with a circulating supply of 507 million → $22 (current price $7.3, +201%)

Conclusion and Investment Risks

Our Conclusion

Current evidence suggests that Sui is more competitive due to its performance advantages and scalability potential. Its unique local fee market, Pilot Fish architecture, and Fast Path design provide a better DeFi pricing environment for high-frequency traders. Coupled with strong community narrative capabilities, Sui has established a leading position in token performance and ecosystem activity.

However, Aptos' advantages in development flexibility and chain robustness should not be overlooked. Although Sui currently leads significantly in economic indicators such as TVL and DEX trading volume, the dynamic changes in the crypto market could quickly reverse the situation. In the long run, the outcome will depend on who can continue to innovate and translate technological advantages into ecosystem prosperity.

Five Core Risks

• Business Expansion Dilemma: Both have not formed a synergistic strategy for technological development and ecosystem expansion. If they cannot cultivate truly killer applications that leverage their technological characteristics, ecosystem prosperity may be difficult to sustain.
• Lack of Technical Stress Testing: Current transactions are primarily simple transfers and have not yet undergone extreme tests of DEX trading volumes at Solana levels. Innovations like Pilot Fish may need to compromise adjustments under high-pressure scenarios.
• Increased Competitive Threats:
• Solana Firedancer Upgrade: After performance upgrades in 2025, it may surpass Sui/Aptos
• Emerging Public Chains: Monad's dual advantages in the technical community, Berachain's speculative momentum
• Historical Lessons: High-performance chains are easily replaced by newcomers (e.g., the decline of EOS and Tezos)
• Macroeconomic Fluctuations: Crypto assets are strongly correlated with M2 money supply (R²=0.36). If the Federal Reserve tightens liquidity or a global financial crisis erupts, SCP market capitalization may shrink significantly.
• Regulatory Black Swan: If the FIT 21 bill sets stringent decentralization standards, it may classify Sui/Aptos as securities, restricting their circulation to qualified investors only.

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