Is Aptos or Sui the Solana Killer?
Cue the scary music, Aptos and Sui showed they could produce higher tps than Solana. So of course we must assume it will replace Solana and why not throw Ethereum in there as well!
I’m kidding of course but it seems like everyday a new blockchain or protocol comes online and the hype exceeds the value.
So will these new Move-based blockchains, Aptos and Sui, replace other layer 1s? Unlikely, but they are competing in the space of high transactions per second (TPS) — dominated by Solana.
Understanding the Contenders
Solana: The Established Player
For those not familiar with Solana, it was the first successful layer 1 to try the high TPS route (we can argue another time whether Avalanche fits this category). Solana devs wanted to focus on speed and scalability compared to Ethereum’s focus on security and decentralization. We won’t have that argument here either but Solana made tradeoffs, just like all the other chains between decentralization, scalability, and security — typically referred to as the “blockchain dilemma” defined by Vitalik Buterin.
Similar to Ethereum, Solana uses Proof of Stake (PoS) but also introduced a unique consensus mechanism called Proof of History (PoH). This allows Solana to process transactions at lightning speed, with capabilities to handle 65,000 transactions per second (TPS).
While Solana is fast, it has been dogged by outages over the years. Luckily, Solana developers have been working on diversifying their validator clients to help improve Solana operability. Firedancer represents a new high-performance validator, contributing to decentralization and also increasing performance. Where Ethereum could theoretically get to 1 million TPS, Firedancer demonstrated it could already process that much.
Aptos and Sui
While Solana primarily runs on Rust, Aptos and Sui (pronounced “Swe” and not “Sue” as I kept saying) run on a new programming language — Move. Move is Rust-based but allows for more simplicity. Move came out of the Facebook Libra (and then renamed to Diem) project. You can read the white paper if you want to learn more. Since Facebook canned the project, the developers left and started their own blockchains.
Aptos
Aptos, developed by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, launched in October 2022. Similar to Ethereum, Aptos uses PoS and Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). Basically, BFT allows the chain to stay fully functional even when nodes go down.
Aptos was around during the bear market and ripped up in TVL during the 2024 bull market. Current TVL is coming in around $354M according to DefiLlama.
While Aptos has around 36 protocols active on the blockchain, the most popular is Aries Market — a lending platform similar to Aave. You can read more about Aptos here.
Sui
Sui, developed by Evan Cheng, Adeniyi Abiodun, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, and Kostas Chalkias, created Mysten Labs to start the blockchain. Sui launched mainnet in May 2023. Where Sui differs from Aptos in execution is the use of Narwhal and Bullshark which allows for parallel execution of transactions.
Sui TVL is coming in around $538M according to DefiLlama.
Sui boasts around 31 protocols with the most popular being Navi. Again, this is a lending protocol.
Who’s Better?
Right now the answer is still Solana. The saturation of DeFi protocols makes it difficult to find any advantages in lending, swapping, perps, etc. They all look the same and offer pretty similar functionality. The new hype today is DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure). Right now, the winner in that space is definitely Solana with Hivemapper and Render. Render is a company that rents out idle GPU computing power and Hivemapper uses vehicle dashcams to sell images to companies like Google Maps.
The difficulty with high TPS chains is that there hasn’t been a need for that much volume. Until we start needing it, protocols and users are going to the most popular — Solana. This may eventually change if we need to start pushing 100,000+ TPS.
If you compare Sui to Aptos, Sui has overtaken Aptos in TVL and overall hype. They even came out with the first hand-held gaming device — SuiPlayox1 a few months ago.
This is a huge gamble that could pay off if gaming truly comes on chain. But for now, Solana is winning the high TPS race with Sui and Aptos far behind.
My Prediction
My guess is that Solana will continue to be the best high TPS blockchain for the foreseeable future. Sui will probably pivot to find a niche space that Solana hasn’t optimized for. I’d say gaming but there really hasn’t been a reason to actually put a game on-chain rather than just the in-game accessories / purchases. Aptos will pivot as well but my guess is it won’t be around in five years. There have only been a few high-profile chains that have collapsed over the years (Terra and Harmony) but I think the next bear market will force some chains to be abandoned as TVL moves to the more popular ones. Incentive programs can only work so long before you run out of money.
-Just Another Crypto Analyst
