The multiple driving forces behind the rise of Sui: from Pokémon collaboration rumors to the surge in DEX volume.

Author: Frank,

Recently, the Sui governance token and its ecosystem have experienced a remarkable surge, with the SUI token itself rising more than 75% within a week, far exceeding the market performance during the same period. Behind this phenomenon are complex interwoven driving factors, including speculative enthusiasm driven by market rumors, significant changes in capital flow, and ongoing improvements in the ecosystem's fundamentals. This article delves into the funding trends of SUI's recent surge, key news catalysts, on-chain data performance, and potential risks, aiming to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the logic behind this ecological carnival.

Hot money flows into the exchange, contract positions surge.

From the on-chain capital flow in recent months, the capital change of Sui is not significant. Over a three-month period, Sui experienced a net outflow of 32 million USD, which is not a high amount. Furthermore, when observing the on-chain capital flow changes over the past month and the past week, Sui's capital movement is even more negligible, failing to rank in the top twenty among public chains.

However, in terms of capital flow on exchanges, the inflow of funds into the Sui ecosystem is quite apparent. According to data from Coinglass, the spot capital inflow for SUI reached 62.86 million USD in the past seven days, ranking fourth among all cryptocurrencies, only behind USDT, ETH, and FUSD. In the capital inflow ranking for contracts over the past seven days, several ecological tokens of the Sui network, such as WAL, MEMEFI, and CETUS, also made it into the top ten, further reflecting the capital activity within the Sui ecosystem.

In the contract holding data, the holding volume of SUI tokens has seen a surge since April 21, increasing from 700 million to 1.419 billion in just one week, a figure that is close to the previous high of 1.5 billion.

Apart from SUI, most tokens in its ecosystem have also experienced significant increases within a week. Among the Sui ecosystem tokens recorded by CoinGecko, 35 tokens have increased by over 100% in the past week, accounting for 20% of Sui ecosystem projects, and 37.5% of tokens have increased by over 50%, which can be described as a flourishing situation.

From a financial perspective, this rise is a collective surge across the Sui ecosystem. Although most projects do not have any substantial positive developments, the price fluctuations on the market are quite evident.

Multiple favorable factors boost market sentiment

On April 21, almost all mainstream tokens began to rebound in sync, and Sui's initial rebound also started in tandem with the overall market's rhythm, followed by a number of positive news releases. However, it is difficult to confirm whether these news items are the "engine" behind Sui's surge or merely "smoke screens" released to accompany the price increase.

On the one hand, there are many news of ecological cooperation in Sui. For example, the Pokémon collaboration rumors: This rumor began on April 23, 2025, when the Pokémon HOME app updated its privacy policy to list "Parasol Technologies" as one of the authorized developers allowed to receive user data. Parasol Technologies is a blockchain game studio that was acquired by Sui's core development team, Mysten Labs, in March 2025. This direct connection quickly ignited the market's imagination, with crypto influencers and social media users speculating that Pokémon might be planning to integrate its IP onto the Sui blockchain. The market narrative focuses on potential NFT integrations or blockchain-based collectibles, and may even be related to Pokémon HOME's newly launched "Medals" feature.

It is worth noting that the official blog post released by the Sui Foundation on April 23 regarding the launch of the collectible card game Parasol on Sui did not mention Pokémon. However, some users claim that an earlier version of the blog mentioned PokémonNFT but was subsequently edited out, which further fueled speculation in the market.

Another example is the xMoney/xPortal partnership: On April 24, Sui announced a partnership with the financial platform xMoney and the crypto super app xPortal. At the heart of the partnership is the launch of a Sui-branded virtual Mastercard in Europe, integrated into the xPortal app, which has 2.5 million users. Users can add the virtual card to ApplePay or GooglePay and pay with SUI and other cryptocurrencies at tens of thousands of merchants as easily as cash. The physical card is scheduled to be launched later in 2025.

On the other hand, the ETF narrative is also considered one of the important factors driving the rise of Sui. Recently, news has spread about 21Shares establishing a "SUI ETF" statutory trust entity. This news is actually not new; according to Delaware company registration information, the "21SHARES SUI ETF" statutory trust entity was established on January 7, 2025, with the registration number 10058451, and its registration type is a common statutory trust. With this news being exposed recently, it seems to also support the rise of SUI.

In addition, there have been several positive news for the Sui network in the past month or two. For example, the Athens Stock Exchange Group announced on April 16 that it has completed the technical design for building an on-chain fundraising platform on Sui; Nautilus launched a verifiable off-chain privacy solution for Sui on April 15; and Canary Capital submitted an application for a SUI ETF, among others.

Overall, the recent progress made by Sui in multiple areas such as Web3 gaming, privacy, and development environment has come together to form a positive outlook. In this regard, it differs from the previous singular news that triggered an outbreak.

The airdrop event has led to a surge in DEX trading volume, facing dual pressures of token unlocking and application development.

Since April, the DEX trading volume on the Sui network has remained at a high level, especially reaching a historical peak of $998 million on March 29, followed by several days of daily trading volume exceeding $400 million. The leading DEX project in the ecosystem, Cetus Protocol, has driven the growth of the entire ecosystem, with its trading volume increasing by 84.5% in the past week, and the token CETUS has nearly doubled in a week.

In addition, another important contributor is Kriya, which contributed $780 million on March 29, the day Sui network's trading volume broke records, accounting for a significant share of the day's trading volume. This figure represents an increase of more than 100 times compared to the previous day's $7.28 million.

In summary, the trading volume of these two DEXs surged on March 28, likely due to the airdrop of Walrus leading to a spike in trading volume. On March 27, the decentralized storage project Walrus, which raised $140 million, announced its airdrop, and on that day the trading volume for the token reached $380 million. This may have been the main reason for the recent increase in trading volume on the Sui network.

In addition, the activity of developers is one of the underlying reasons for the growth of the Sui network. Recently, the code commits of the Sui network on GitHub have also been quite frequent. Starting from December 2024, the frequency of code commits for the Sui network reached a peak, maintaining at over 500 times per week, while the previous figure was around 250 times. In comparison, the code commit frequency for Solana and Aptos has remained around 100.

![Multiple drivers behind Sui's rise: from Pokémon collaboration rumors to soaring DEX trading volume]###https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-e5cf2ac41442225970b2f104faaa90a6(

![Multiple Driving Forces Behind Sui's Rise: From Pokémon Collaboration Rumors to Surge in DEX Trading Volume])https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-f7eb4d9d7a375c5e4b123f350246239c(

However, during the collective celebration of the market, there are several risk points that may be worth noting. On one hand, the unlocking of SUI tokens is a continuous selling pressure, with tens of millions of tokens being released almost every week, making it the largest supplier in the market. These unlocked tokens are always an unpredictable bomb in the rising cycle of SUI tokens.

On the other hand, the upward structure of the Sui ecosystem is currently mainly led by Dex or infrastructure projects, but the performance of MEME tokens or application/game projects has not yet stood out. At the same time, tokens with a market capitalization above 10 million are basically still early projects. From this perspective, if we compare Sui to a city, within this city, decentralized storage, DeFi, games, and other themed malls have been built around projects like Walrus, Deepbook, and Parasol. However, these malls currently lack some "internet celebrity merchants" to further attract a large number of users to truly enter the market.

From this perspective, the recent surge of the SUI token and its ecosystem is the result of the combined effects of market speculation enthusiasm, influx of funds, expectations in the futures market, and solid fundamental progress. However, while paying attention to the impressive performance of the Sui price, one must also be wary of the selling pressure brought about by the continuous unlocking of tokens, and focus on whether its application ecosystem can further prosper and create truly attractive blockbuster applications for users. This will be the key to determining whether Sui can convert its current popularity into long-term value.