SUI Token Drops 8% Ahead of $200M Unlock, Even as Sui Blockchain Hits ATH in Monthly Active Addresses

The native token for the Sui blockchain has been among the worst performers over the past seven days ahead of its $200 million unlock slated for Dec. 1.

The native token for the Sui blockchain has seen a decrease in value ahead of its $200 million unlock on Dec. 1.

While SUI has risen 109% in the last 30 days and quadrupled in the last three months, the token dropped 8% in the past week to $3.40, making it the fourth-worst performer in the short timeframe out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, according to data from CoinGecko. POPCAT, BONK, and KAS performed worse in the last seven days.

This coming Sunday, about 64.2 million SUI tokens, valued at roughly $200 million and accounting for more than 2% of the circulating supply, will be unlocked, according to vesting analytics platform Tokenomist.

Of the total, about 77% is earmarked for early contributors as well as Series A and B investors. The remaining tokens are allocated to a community reserve and the treasury of Mysten Labs, the software firm developing the blockchain.

Andreessen Horowitz led Sui’s Series A funding round in 2021 with participation from several firms such as Coinbase Ventures and Electric Capital. Mysten Labs announced in 2022 the close of its $300 million Series B funding round led by FTX Ventures and participation from Jump Crypto, Binance Labs, and Franklin Templeton.

The teams behind crypto projects often use vesting schedules for their native tokens in an effort to prevent large-scale selling by founders and investors during the network’s early stages.

Regular unlocks for Sui are set to occur until April 2030.

Since the last unlocking event on Nov. 1 when roughly the same number of tokens were released, SUI saw an increase in its price, adding nearly $4.2 billion to its market cap. At presstime, SUI’s market cap stood at $9.8 billion.

The token’s price movement comes as the network reached an all-time high in monthly active addresses at 9.1 million as of Tuesday, a 38% increase from 6.6 million at the start of November, according to blockchain analytics firm Artemis. The rise in monthly active addresses coincides with a record level of monthly trading volume on Sui.

Cetus, the largest decentralized exchange on Sui by total value locked, generated $6 billion in trading volume for November, more than the last three months combined, according to the DEX’s analytics page.

In related news, Sui has seen the third-highest netflows, or bridged inflows minus outflows, at about $447 million, behind layer 1 network Solana and Coinbase-incubated L2 Base.