The Sui Foundation, responsible for managing and developing the Sui blockchain, has announced a $51.3 million ecosystem fund to support the DeFi ecosystem and its on-chain central limit order book platform, DeepBook.
In a recent announcement, the organization revealed that it would recapture 117 million SUI tokens worth $51.3 million from “external market makers” and direct them toward supporting the Sui ecosystem. The additional funds will be used to develop the Sui ecosystem by providing grants to DeFi application developers and supporting its on-chain CLOB platform, DeepBook, for routing and matching on-chain trades.
DeepBook aims to simulate high-frequency trading capabilities similar to Nasdaq and centralized exchanges by leveraging the fast transaction speed of the Sui network. A spokesperson for the Sui Foundation stated that Sui offers advantages such as “low latency and unparalleled high throughput” through its “user-centric approach, horizontal scalability, and efficient on-chain storage.”
The press release boasted that the network had achieved a “record 65.8 million transactions in a day, surpassing the performance of any other blockchain in history.”
Greg Siourounis, CEO of the Sui Foundation, added in the press release that the allocation would bring a “breath of fresh air” to “ecosystem developers and participants.”
At the time of Sui’s mainnet launch in May, the organization allocated approximately 396 million tokens to market makers, accounting for 75% of the initial circulating supply. Currently, it seems the organization is reclaiming those tokens, and the spokesperson declined to comment on agreements with market makers.
However, they did state that “SUI continues to be a highly liquid token on CEX.”
In addition to focusing on DeepBook, the organization will also consider supporting other native DeFi applications on decentralized exchanges, liquidity provisioning, and automated market maker (AMM) platforms on the network.
Currently, Sui ranks 35th among top blockchains in terms of total value locked in DeFi protocols, with assets worth $38.2 million, according to DeFiLlama data.