The two hottest public chains in this bull market, Solana and Sui, follow an almost identical path.
Both first drive up the coin price, then supplement data to tell a story.
In simple terms:
Step 1: The coin price takes off first.
Solana rose from 8 to 200, while Sui jumped from 0.3 to 2. As the price rises, naturally, people pay attention, the media promotes it, and funds enter the market, leading to an increase in lock-up amounts and other data.
Rising is the hard truth! As the coin price increases, naturally, people will help you find reasons for the rise.
Step 2: Develop hardware to attract attention.
Solana launched a crypto phone, Saga, but the buyers were all seasoned players from the crypto world, mainly aiming for airdrops.
Sui followed suit and created a gaming handheld, SuiPlay, which sold out 10,000 units in seconds. What are the buyers after? It's still for the ecosystem project airdrops, with more than 10 projects already promising to distribute tokens to handheld users.
Step 3: Bind developers tightly.
Sui is even tougher: Want my grants and subsidies? Fine, but you must sign an exclusive agreement—only develop on my chain! This forces developers to focus on building the ecosystem, unlike other chains where developers are all over the place.
Step 4: Collaborate within the ecosystem.
Projects on Sui are particularly united, often airdropping to each other. For example, users ranked in the top 50 on the lending platform Navi, although they didn’t receive Navi's own tokens, still received airdrops from other ecosystem projects. User stickiness is high.
Most people in the crypto world don’t care about technology; they only care about making money. When the coin price rises, naturally, there will be followers to boast about it.
Although it's clear that there's manipulation behind the scenes, the team's execution is indeed strong—within two years, they brought the ecosystem data into the top 10, which is undeniable.
Now Sui is still chasing Solana, but at this momentum, in two years, they might be able to compete.