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

In-depth analysis of the funding trends, key news catalysts, on-chain data performance, and potential risks behind the recent pump of SUI, aiming to comprehensively interpret the logic behind this ecological carnival.

Written by: Frank, PANews

Recently, the Sui governance token and its ecosystem have experienced a remarkable surge, with the SUI token itself rising over 75% within a week, far exceeding the market performance during the same period. This phenomenon is driven by a complex interplay of factors, including speculative enthusiasm sparked by market rumors, significant changes in capital flows, and continuous improvements in the ecosystem’s fundamentals. This article by PANews delves into the funding trends behind this round of SUI’s rise, key news catalysts, on-chain data performance, and potential risks, aiming to comprehensively interpret the logic behind this ecological carnival.

Hot money flows into the exchange, contract positions surge

Based on 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 flow has shown even smaller fluctuations, failing to rank in the top twenty among public chains.

However, in terms of capital flow on the exchange, the inflow of funds into the Sui ecosystem is quite evident. According to data from Coinglass, the spot capital inflow of SUI reached 62.86 million USD in the past seven days, ranking fourth among all cryptocurrencies, following USDT, ETH, and FUSD. In the capital inflow ranking for contracts over the past seven days, several ecosystem 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 terms of the contract’s position data, the holding volume of the SUI token began to rise sharply from April 21, increasing from 700 million dollars to 1.419 billion dollars in just one week, a figure that is close to the previous high of 1.5 billion dollars.

Apart from SUI, most tokens in its ecosystem have also experienced significant rises within a week. Among the Sui ecosystem tokens listed on CoinGecko, 35 tokens have seen a rise of over 100% in the past week, accounting for 20% of Sui ecosystem projects, and 37.5% of the tokens have risen over 50%, which can be described as a comprehensive bloom.

From a financial perspective, this pump is a collective rise of the Sui ecosystem. Although most projects have not made any significant positive progress, the price fluctuations on the market are very noticeable.

Multiple favorable factors boost market sentiment

On April 21, almost all mainstream tokens began to rebound in sync, and the initial rise of Sui also started to kick off with the market’s rhythm, followed by a number of positive news releases. However, it is difficult to confirm whether these news are the “engine” behind Sui’s surge or merely a “smoke screen” released to support the price increase.

On the one hand, Sui has come out with multiple news of ecological cooperation. For example, the Pokémon collaboration rumors: The rumors 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 “medal” 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 referred to PokémonNFT, which was later edited out, further fueling market speculation.

For example, xMoney/xPortal collaboration: On April 24, Sui announced a partnership with the financial platform xMoney and the crypto super app xPortal. The core of this collaboration is to launch a Sui-branded virtual Mastercard in Europe, which is integrated within the xPortal app that has 2.5 million users. Users can add this virtual card to ApplePay or GooglePay and use SUI and other cryptocurrencies for payments at tens of thousands of merchants, just as conveniently as using cash. The physical card is planned 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 about 21Shares establishing a “SUI ETF” statutory trust entity has been circulated. This news is actually not new, as according to Delaware company registration information, the “21SHARES SUI ETF” statutory trust entity was established long ago on January 7, 2025, with 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 of SUI in multiple areas such as Web3 gaming, privacy, and development environments has converged into a cohesive positive outlook. In this regard, it differs from the previous single news event that triggered a pump.

Airdrop events drive 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 USD on March 29, followed by several days of daily trading volume exceeding 400 million USD. 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 also nearly doubled in a week.

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

Combined, the trading volume of these two DEXs skyrocketed on March 28, mainly due to the spike in trading volume caused by Walrus’ airdrop. On March 27, Walrus, a decentralized storage project that raised $140 million, launched an airdrop, and the token reached $380 million in trading volume on the same day. This may be the main reason for the recent increase in trading volume on the Sui network.

In addition, the activity of developers is also one of the underlying reasons for the growth of the Sui network. On GitHub, the code submissions for the Sui network have also been relatively frequent recently. Since December 2024, the frequency of code submissions for the Sui network has peaked, maintaining at over 500 times per week, while the previous data was around 250 times. In comparison, the code submission frequency for Solana and Aptos has remained around 100.

However, during the collective frenzy of the market, there are several risk points that may be worth noting. On one hand, the token unlock of SUI 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 rising 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, while tokens with a market value of over 10 million are basically still early projects. From this perspective, if we compare Sui to a 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-famous merchants” to further attract large-scale users to truly enter.

From this perspective, the recent pump of SUI tokens and its ecosystem is the result of the market’s speculative enthusiasm, influx of funds, expectations in the contract market, and solid fundamental progress. However, while paying attention to Sui’s impressive price performance, it is also necessary to be cautious of the selling pressure brought about by the continuous unlocking of tokens and to focus on whether its application ecosystem can further thrive, giving rise to truly attractive blockbuster applications for users. This will be key in determining whether Sui can convert its current heat into long-term value.