SUI Outpaces TRON and Cardano in 2026 Liquidity Race

• Year-to-date, Sui has processed over $43 billion in cumulative trading volume, beating other top tokens like Cardano and TRON.
• Sui is also inching closer to overtaking Avalanche in stablecoin volume, topping the $2 trillion mark this week.

Sui has become the network to beat in 2026, with its cumulative trading volume for the year overtaking established networks like TRON, Cardano, Hyperledger and Avalanche.

Data from Artemis shows that from the turn of the year to date, the network had processed $43.4 billion in cumulative volume. This was nearly $8 billion more than TRON, which has become a household name for stablecoin transactions.

Data from DeFiLlama shows that TRON controls 35% of the stablecoins market, with only Ethereum processing more stablecoin transactions. Combined, the two have an 86% share of the stablecoin market. However, Sui still edged TRON in this year’s cumulative volume chart.

Image courtesy of Sui Community.

ADA, which has seen a revival with the launch of the Midnight Network, hit $32.4 billion year-to-date. As CNF reported, founder Charles Hoskinson recently revealed that the Midnight mainnet will launch before the end of next month. But while the network processed billions of dollars across DeFi, stablecoins and payments, its founder says he has lost $3 billion of his personal fortune as the markets turned.

Other top movers are Hyperliquid with $18.9 billion and Avalanche with $18.4 billion. The former is the largest decentralized derivatives exchange and a darling of Wall Street investors, with Cantor Fitzgerald claiming that its market cap will rise to $200 billion in five years. Recent inconsistencies with its trading volume have not impacted its perp DEX volumes.

Sui Network Metrics Surge, Token Struggles

Other network metrics for Sui have also been on an uptrend. Its cumulative stablecoin transfer volume recently surged past $2 trillion, and it’s edging close to overtaking Avalanche, whose volume stands at $2.1 trillion.

Impressively, this achievement comes despite stablecoin transfers only launching recently in October 2024 on the network, while Avalanche’s have been around since 2021.

Image courtesy of Sui Community.

New accounts have also seen a significant increase since mid-February, doubling from below 200,000 to nearly 400,000.

However, some other metrics have cooled down in recent weeks, in line with the broader dip in crypto market sentiment. Daily active users have stagnated around 300,000 since mid-February, data from Artemis shows. This is a sharp drop from the height of the bull market in October last year when they would constantly break the 1 million mark.

While cumulative stablecoin volume is hitting $2 trillion, the number of users transacting stablecoins daily on Sui has dropped drastically from over 40,000 last August to around 5,000.

The price has struggled the most. SUI currently trades at $0.8597, a 4.8% drop in the past day, during which it set an intra-day high of $0.903. The past 30 days have seen the token shed 41.5%, with the market cap dropping by over $2 billion in that time.