The Sui Network (SUI) will unlock nearly $150 million worth of its native token on April 1. This is part of Sui tokenomics and the monthly unlock schedule that inflates SUI’s circulating supply and dilutes investors’ holdings.
Finbold has been monitoring and reporting Sui cliff unlocks according to data from Tokenomist. 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.
February saw a lower unlock of $250 million, and an even larger drop occurred in March as the entire market collapsed – valued at $181.67 million. It is important, however, to understand that the unlocked amount in SUI tokens remains the same.
The phenomenon is set to repeat tomorrow, on Tuesday, if SUI continues trading close to its current level. Indeed, the usual 64.2 million SUI unlock currently holds a nominal value of $147 million. This will artificially increase Sui’s circulating supply and market capitalization by 2.1% after the token unlock.
Over $445 million of token unlocks next week
Overall, “Cliff Unlocks” data from Tokenomist also shows that $445.97 million will be unlocked by 45 cryptocurrency networks in the next seven days. Other projects with significant unlocks are Wormhole (W) and Ethena (ENA), with $117.30 million and $76.41 million, respectively.
Yet, SUI still represents the largest share, unlocking around one-third 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 $2.6 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 3.2 billion (32%) of its maximum capped supply of 10 billion SUI. At $2.29 per token, the “Solana-killer” has a fully diluted value (FDV) of $23 billion. This would put SUI, currently with a $7.3 billion capitalization, between Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX), each with a $23.6 billion and $22.5 billion market cap, respectively.
Notably, 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.
Featured image from Shutterstock
