Walrus & 2 Sui Ecosystem Gems That Could Explode in Dec 2025

Market Conditions and the Importance of Builders

Despite the recent market downturn, with Bitcoin down 22% over the last month, it's crucial to identify and support projects that are actively building and creating valuable products. In this challenging market environment, focusing on innovation and development within ecosystems is more important than ever.

One of the most consistent builders in recent years has been the Sui ecosystem. According to technical analysis experts, Sui has the potential for significant growth, with projections of up to a 97% pump. As liquidity returns to the market, projects within the Sui ecosystem are expected to follow suit. This article will highlight Walrus and two other top Sui ecosystem projects, examining their development progress amidst current market conditions.

Walrus ($WAL): Decentralized Storage for the AI Era

Walrus is a standout project in the Sui Ecosystem, focusing on providing decentralized storage solutions that are scalable, cost-effective, and highly secure. The project has been actively expanding its reach through strategic partnerships and participation in industry events, such as DevConnect.

Walrus recently hosted a large-scale Hackathon with four distinct tracks: Provable Authenticity, AI and Data, and other emerging areas. This initiative underscores their commitment to fostering innovation within the decentralized storage and AI sectors.

Walrus positions itself as a facilitator of data markets for the AI era. In an age where personal data is often freely given to social media platforms, decentralized AI aims to prevent a similar pattern with AI models and datasets. The sheer scale of data required for AI training, with models like ChatGPT training on 10 exabyte datasets, necessitates specialized storage solutions.

These AI models require robust storage for their training data and models themselves, along with effective user access controls. Walrus, in conjunction with Seal, provides these essential capabilities.

Talus Partnership

The partnership with Talus Labs further highlights Walrus's capabilities. Talus, an AI infrastructure network for AI Agents, utilizes Walrus for native data access. This integration allows AI agents to operate efficiently, with seamless access to necessary data from models and datasets. It functions as a highly efficient system for accessing vast amounts of information precisely when needed.

Walrus's decentralized infrastructure is also crucial in mitigating risks associated with centralized services, as demonstrated by recent Cloudflare outages. Decentralized solutions offer greater resilience and prevent single points of failure, ensuring continuous operation for websites, NFT collections, and other applications, even in challenging environments. This offers an alternative to relying solely on major cloud providers like Google and Amazon.

Walrus is a foundational component of the Sui Stack, providing robust decentralized storage. While currently impacted by the broader market trend, its strong backing within the Sui ecosystem and its ongoing development suggest significant potential for recovery and long-term growth.

Suilend ($SEND): A Leading DeFi Protocol on Sui

Suilend ($SEND) is a prominent lending and borrowing platform within the Sui ecosystem, currently holding the highest Total Value Locked (TVL) at $295 million. Its development on Sui is driven by the blockchain's capacity for low fees and high throughput, providing $SEND with a strong foundation for performance-optimized operations.

Beyond core lending and borrowing, Suilend offers a range of features:

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  An intuitive swap interface, considered one of the best on Sui.
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  Looping strategies that allow users to borrow against deposits and redeposit to increase leverage and yield.
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  A $SEND token buyback program.
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  STEAMM, a Superfluid AMM platform that reuses idle funds for additional yield through lending.
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  Liquid staking options with $sSUI or SpringSui, enabling users to earn rewards without locking their funds by receiving a tradable token in return for staked assets.

Suilend's user-friendly design includes robust risk management through isolated lending pools for higher-risk assets. This approach helps contain systemic risk while fostering innovation, making the protocol more resilient. Notably, Suilend operated without issues during the market liquidation crash on October 10th.

Real Yield and Governance

Suilend offers "real yield," with deposit interest directly generated from on-chain borrowing activity, ensuring full transparency. The $SEND token grants governance rights, allowing holders to participate in protocol changes. Currently priced at 21 cents with a $12.6 million market cap, $SEND has seen an 8.4% increase on the day. Despite market volatility affecting most altcoins, $SEND presents a potentially attractive entry point into a leading Sui DeFi protocol.

Bluefin ($BLUE): A Decentralized Everything Exchange

Bluefin ($BLUE) is another key player in the Sui DeFi ecosystem, ranking fourth in TVL on DeFiLlama for Sui. It aims to be a comprehensive decentralized exchange, with a particular strength as Sui's leading perpetuals decentralized exchange (DEX). Bluefin offers a fast trading experience, comparable to centralized exchanges (CEXs), with claims of sub-second settlement.

Initially launched on Arbitrum in early 2023, Bluefin migrated to Sui in September 2023 with its V2 version, leveraging Sui's low latency and high throughput for on-chain trading. The platform fully transitioned to Sui in January 2024 after closing its Arbitrum operations.

Bluefin provides a diverse set of features:

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  A swap interface for token exchanges.
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  A perpetuals DEX for leveraged trading.
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  Lending and borrowing functionalities.
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  Liquidity pools offering attractive Annual Percentage Rates (APRs), such as the $DEEP-$SUI pool with a 369% 24-hour APR.
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  Vaults providing APYs ranging from 1% to 53.9% (e.g., Walrus vault).

These offerings indicate Bluefin's ambition to be a full-stack financial hub on Sui, not just a niche application. It employs a hybrid order-book and on-chain settlement model, combining the speed of CEXs with the security and transparency of on-chain transactions.

Institutional Backing and Token Utility

Bluefin benefits from significant institutional backing from investors such as Polychain, Wintermute, and SIG, distinguishing it from many earlier-stage Sui ecosystem projects. The $BLUE token offers tangible utility, including governance rights and rewards for liquidity provision and trading. Bluefin also operates a token buyback program.

The current $BLUE price is 4.7 cents, with a market cap of $15.5 million, and it has seen a 7.3% increase today. The recent launch of $BLUE on the Kraken exchange further solidifies its market presence.

This article has explored three key projects within the Sui ecosystem: Walrus, Suilend, and Bluefin, highlighting their ongoing development and potential.

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