Sui Network (SUI) to Unlock $250M Worth of Native Token, Diluting Investors' Holdings

The Sui Network (SUI) will unlock over $250 million worth of its native token on February 1. This is part of Sui tokenomics and monthly unlock schedule that inflates SUI's circulating supply and dilutes investors' holdings.

The Sui Network (SUI) will unlock over $250 million in its native token on February 1. This is part of Sui tokenomics and a monthly unlock schedule that inflates SUI’s circulating supply and dilutes investors’ holdings.

Finbold has been monitoring and reporting Sui cliff unlocks. For example, December 1 saw Sui’s largest unlock in U.S. dollar value of 2024, unlocking $224 million worth of 64.19 million tokens. January 2025 had an even larger unlock nominal value for the same amount, valued at $274 million, as reported.

The phenomenon is set to repeat tomorrow, on Saturday, if SUI continues trading close to its current level. Indeed, the usual 64.2 million SUI unlock currently holds a nominal value of $269.62 million. This will artificially increase Sui’s circulating supply and market capitalization by 2.1% after the token unlock.

Interestingly, there are still 1.77 billion SUI locked in vested contracts with a scheduled unlock. Over 5.22 billion of locked SUI tokens are not yet scheduled, classified as “TBD locked” by Tokenomist.

Over $500 million in token unlocks next week

Overall, “Cliff Unlocks” data from Tokenomist also shows that $539.16 million will be unlocked by 40 cryptocurrency projects in the next seven days. Other projects with significant unlocks are XDC Network (XDC) and Ethena (ENA), with $93.43 million and $39.09 million, respectively.

Yet, SUI still represents the largest share, unlocking nearly 50% of all upcoming cliff events for the next week on Tokenomist. However, Ripple’s XRP leads, as usual, the largest monthly unlocks in USD value of the entire market, unlocking over $3 billion in XRP on the same day as Sui.

SUI tokenomics and market effects

Sui Series A and B investors receive the most, getting over 19 million SUI each for 61% of the total. Mysten Labs gets the remaining 25.03 million, reserving 12.63 million for the community, 10.34 million for early contributors, and 2.07 million for its treasury.

So far, the Sui Network has already unlocked 3 billion (30%) of its maximum capped supply of 10 billion SUI. At $4.20 per token, the “Solana-killer” has a fully diluted value (FDV) of $42 billion. This would put SUI, currently with a $12.6 billion capitalization, between Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA), each with a $49.9 billion and $34.9 billion market cap, respectively.

Each time the network unlocks more tokens, it increases the potential selling pressure and artificially inflates the market cap. An increasing supply requires a similar, or better, increased demand to sustain its prices, according to the laws of economics. On that note, Adeniyi Abiodun revealed that the world’s “largest consumer platform” is coming to Sui Network this year.

On a cautionary perspective, Sui has a unique tokenomics, which allows Mysten Labs and Series A/B investors to stake their locked tokens. These positions generate asymmetric liquid rewards against other staking investors, allowing these entities to sell these rewards or compound their staking positions over time.