What is the SUI NFT scene?

Smart money is pouring into the Sui NFT market. The new Layer 1 blockchain launched its mainnet last week and already has a vibrant NFT scene. What do we know about NFTs on Sui?

What do we know about Sui NFTs?

Speculators have labeled Sui a potential “Solana killer”. It has fast transactions and low fees similar to Solana, but it remains to be seen if this will be enough to establish SUI as a top blockchain for NFTs. After all, Aptos and Near both started out strong, but quickly lost relevance after their initial hype wore off.

The Sui NFT craze started with the long-awaited release of Fuddies. Fuddies, a 10,000-part owl PFP project, made strong progress with massive influencer marketing, an endorsement list campaign, and support from Mysten Labs, the owner of Sui’s largest NFT marketplace Clutchy. The collection started with an approval list for 95 SUI (about $125) before running a Dutch auction-style mint. The Dutch auction began at 300 SUI and gradually decreased until it was minted around 150 SUI.

Unfortunately, Clutchy disappointed the market in its first appearance on a big stage. The site went down, frustrating traders who appeared to be flipping the coin for a quick profit. Eventually, however, Clutchy came back online and Fuddies reported 605,000 SUI in volume, worth approximately $792,500.

Fuddie’s Twitter account went on the offensive after the dust settled. It tweeted, “Fuddies just passed the whole @0xPolygonLabs in 24-hour sales volume and @SuiNetwork didn’t even have to pay us to launch their chain.” This post got a ton of engagement and captures the project and Sui’s underdog mentality.

However, Fuddies is not the only successful project at Sui. Suishi, a sushi-themed PFP project, also managed to put out the entire collection. Since it was phased out, it has a lifetime volume of 21,000 SUI already. There is clearly a demand among NFT collectors to get early projects from new blockchains in case they ever gain historical significance in the future.

What makes Sui different?

Sui is a proof-of-stake blockchain that runs on a modified version of the Move programming language. It has a cap of 10 billion SUI tokens which will be used for gas fees, stakes and governance. Half of the tokens are allocated to the Community Reserve, a fund for future development managed by the Sui Foundation.

The majority of the remaining tokens went to people who contributed to the project. A further 14% of the offering went to investors. Community members then had the opportunity to purchase the SUI token when the mainnet launched last Wednesday.

Clutchy founder and CEO Jacob “Dizzy Lizzy” Lawless commented that his marketplace has “tons of interest from influencers, investors, creators and viewers.” Part of this interest comes from Sui’s ability to handle more advanced features than other blockchains. Sui has sufficient scalability to allow dynamic NFTs to update in real time. For example, in-game items such as weapons or armor can improve during gameplay.

This application can be a big difference for Sui. It has already helped capture the attention of several major upcoming game titles. Bushi, an Overwatch-style FPS, chose to launch on Sui. Similarly, The Walking Dead universe will release a game on Sui in the future. Another long-awaited Web3 game, Panzerdogs, Sui found compelling enough to sway away from Solana in favor of it.

When asked about Sui, the pseudonymous Web3 advisor Dabblerer stated: “I feel there is still a lot of interesting experimentation going on, culminating in a new wave of NFT and dapp innovation. The launches are inspired by the experiences of early mobs with some different impressions.”

Major exchanges have already taken notice. Since its launch last week, Sui has already been listed on Binance, OKX, Kucoin and Bybit. It is clear that these Web3 companies expect Sui to see a lot of volume and are preparing to meet this demand.

Time will tell if Sui will one day be able to compete with Ethereum and Solana for NFT supremacy. However, it has had some early success and looks to make it interesting going into the next market cycle.