The Sui blockchain hasn’t yet catapulted into the bull-run conversation. But its DeFi ecosystem is trending up and to the right, creating an opening for one of its biggest protocols to capitalize.
Suilend, which facilitates crypto borrowing and lending on Sui, raised $2 million in February and just closed on an additional $4 million, its pseudonymous founder Rooter told CoinDesk. The funding trove will allow Suilend to weather potential market shifts, he said.
“It’s the time to do it and make sure that we have capital to last for the next four years, if there’s a long bear market,” Rooter said.
The latest round was led by Tarun Chitra’s Robot Ventures with participation from a bevy of venture firms and angel investors. It comes days ahead of Suilend’s debut of a new token, called SAVE.
Suilend is the chain’s second-largest DeFi protocol by total value locked, or TVL, as measured by DefiLlama, and its biggest lending protocol, with nearly $470 million of TVL. Its 30-day revenue of nearly $820,000 also places it among the chain’s top earners.
Those numbers aren’t much when compared to the top venues on other ecosystems on fast and cheap layer-1 blockchains like Solana, where Suilend has its roots. An associated lending protocol on Solana called Save (formerly Solend, once Solana’s top lending protocol) has accrued $500,000 in monthly revenue off $450 million of TVL.
But Rooter isn’t concerned with Sui’s current ranking against Solana. He’s an evangelist for Sui’s relative upsides that could eventually give it a greater capture of the market. For example, he’s found that software developments can proceed “a few times faster” on Sui.
“We’re actually able to ship more” on Sui, Rooter said, pointing to a recently launched liquid staking token project and automated market maker that will soon join its core lending suite.
Suilend’s LST design is informed by the missteps Rooter and Solend endured firsthand. Its “infinitely liquid” design means holders don’t wait through unstaking delays to unlock the tokens underlying their LST, he said. Issues with a Solana LST’s multi-day unlock once caused chaos at Solend.
“Building three protocols in a year — I don’t know if that would have been possible for us to do on Solana,” he said.