An Initial Exploration of the Sui Ecosystem NFT Market: A Coexistence of Excitement and Challenges

On May 3rd, the Sui Network mainnet officially launched. Prior to this, an active NFT community had already taken root on this emerging blockchain. NFTs issued by multiple projects not only generated considerable trading volume but also attracted the attention of many users.

Although Ethereum and Solana are still the most active NFT trading platforms currently, Sui Network has also attracted the attention of many traders. As an emerging Layer 1 public chain, Sui Network is one of the most anticipated blockchain projects recently, and has even been referred to by some as "the killer of a certain well-known public chain." However, whether Sui can continue to support a thriving NFT ecosystem remains to be seen, as similar emerging public chains have also gone through a phase of explosive popularity followed by a rapid cooling down.

The Sui Ecosystem NFT Market Faces Technical Challenges in Its Early Stage

On May 4th, the NFT project "Fuddies" was launched on the Sui Network. The project consists of 10,000 PFPs, each depicting cartoon owls in various poses and styles, making it the largest NFT project by issuance on the Sui Network to date. However, after the Fuddies NFTs were minted, the hosting marketplace experienced technical issues, causing dissatisfaction among NFT traders and Web3 builders.

The NFT market originally planned to offer Fuddies NFT to whitelisted users at a price of 95 SUI (approximately 125 USD), while the public sale adopted a Dutch auction format, gradually decreasing from an initial price of 300 SUI (approximately 395 USD) until it sold out at 150 SUI (nearly 200 USD).

But the problem is that the secondary trading functionality of the market failed to operate as expected, leaving many buyers hoping to sell their Fuddies NFT for quick profits disappointed. Subsequently, the platform postponed another round of NFT minting originally scheduled for May 10 and issued an apology to the Sui community, acknowledging that there were issues during the Beta release phase.

Nevertheless, the market quickly reactivated its secondary trading feature. Reports indicate that Fuddies NFT generated approximately $792,500 in trading volume within 24 hours. The project team also claimed on social media that the trading volume in the 24 hours after trading resumed exceeded the total NFT trading volume on another public chain during the same period.

The performance of NFT projects on the Sui chain is polarized

Currently, some of the more popular NFT projects on the Sui chain seem to have borrowed elements from successful projects on other public chains. For example, the Fuddies project has some similarities with a well-known NFT project on Ethereum that also has an "owl" theme. Another NFT project minted and sold out on Sui, Suishi, appears to be a combination of certain well-known "cat" and "penguin" themed NFT projects.

However, the sales performance of NFT projects on the Sui chain shows a clear polarization. Compared to Fuddies' nearly $800,000 in 24-hour sales, Suishi has only achieved about $14,300 in secondary trading since its mint.

In addition to the aforementioned NFT market, another platform called Souffl3 has also expanded to the Sui Network. The largest Sui NFT project on this platform, "Sui Trident," accumulated approximately $65,000 in trading volume within 24 hours of its launch.

The Future Prospects of the Sui Chain NFT Ecosystem

Before the launch of the Sui Network mainnet, the industry had high expectations for its NFT ecosystem. In fact, there has been an "NFT gold rush" on Ethereum, Solana, and more recently Bitcoin Ordinals, where creators and investors hope to seize the opportunity on the emerging public blockchain.

However, a similar situation has also occurred on other emerging public chains. For example, after Aptos debuted in October 2022, its on-chain NFT trading volume surged for a time, but the craze quickly dissipated. So, will the Sui ecosystem follow the same path?

In fact, the Sui ecosystem has some unique advantages. First, the Sui Network can achieve more advanced features, such as real-time updating dynamic NFTs, which are greatly beneficial to the blockchain gaming sector. Second, the Sui NFT ecosystem can also expand to other potential use cases, such as the project "Sui Name Service (SuiNS)" that mimics Ethereum's domain name service.

Overall, the technology of Sui Network provides a good platform for innovation. The Move programming language it adopts lowers the threshold for creators to innovate through dynamic NFTs, promising to bring more interesting applications and experiences. Although the Sui mainnet has only been online for a short time and the survival ability of many innovative projects remains to be observed, it is certain that Sui's addition will further increase healthy competition in the NFT market, which is more beneficial than harmful for the entire ecosystem.