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Complete Guide to Getting Started in the Sui Ecosystem
Sui is one of the fastest growing layer 1 blockchains in crypto this cycle which means opportunity for early adopters. In this Sui beginners guide, we’ll show you how to get started with the top wallets, blockchain explorers, DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, trading platforms, portfolio managers, and more. All the tools you need to play in the Sui ecosystem are covered in this new user getting stared guide.
Top Wallets for Exploring the Sui Ecosystem
A wallet is the first thing new users will need to participate in the Sui ecosystem. There’s a bunch of solid Web3 wallets that are compatible with the Sui Network. Backpack wallet, Suiet, and Nightly are all good options for Sui. However, in my opinion, Slush Wallet and Phantom wallet are the top 2 options for interacting with Sui DeFi protocols and trading platforms.
Slush is the Native Sui Blockchain Wallet
Slush Wallet, is a product of Mysten Labs (team that built the Sui blockchain) and is the native wallet for the Sui ecosystem. It’s compatible with every dApp and protocol built on Sui. Using Slush Wallet offers several key advantages which include…
User-Friendly Interface: Slush wallet creates a seamless experience for both beginners and experienced users. Its sleek users interface makes it easy to execute DeFi transactions quickly, often within seconds of opening the wallet.
zkLogin for Easy Onboarding: Slush supports zkLogin, enabling users to create a wallet using social logins (e.g., Google, Twitch, or Facebook) without managing seed phrases, making it ideal for onboarding new people to crypto.
Seamless Sui Ecosystem Integration: Slush is built for the entire Sui ecosystem, offering direct access to DeFi, NFTs, trading tools, and dApps. It supports protocols like Walrus, DeepBook, and SuiNS, with smooth syncing across web, mobile (iOS/Android), and Chrome extensions.
Fast and Low-Cost Transactions: Users praise Slush for its speed (e.g., transactions in 0.49 seconds) and low gas fees, leveraging Sui’s high-throughput blockchain.
2 Ways to Send Sui Assets: Slush Links allows users to send Sui ecosystem tokens or NFTs via claimable links or QR codes, simplifying asset sharing.
Security: As a non-custodial wallet, Slush wallet ensures users retain full control of their assets. It offers enterprise-grade security and Ledger support for added protection.
Staking Support: Slush facilitates native staking of SUI tokens with low minimum requirements (1 SUI), enabling users to earn passive income and participate in securing the network while potentially qualifying for airdrops.
Phantom Wallet for Sui Blockchain
Phantom Wallet has fully integrated Sui network support, making it an excellent choice for Solana and Ethereum users looking to enter Sui.
- Cross-chain functionality: Users can easily bridge from Ethereum and Solana to Sui with Phantom’s cross-chain swaps
- In-wallet swaps: Swap all Sui ecosystem tokens directly in Phantom wallet
- Familiar interface: Phantom wallet offers an transition for existing Solana and Ethereum users to Sui
Funding Your Wallet with $SUI
There are a number of ways you can fund your Phantom and/or Slush wallets with $SUI. You can buy SUI on a centralized exchange like Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance and then transfer it to your wallet. You can buy $SUI directly in the Slush wallet as they’ve integrated top exchanges. Or, you can use Phantom wallet’s cross-chain swaps to swap $SOL to $SUI.
SuiVision and Suiscan Blockchain Explorers are Gateways to Sui Network
Now that you have your Sui wallets funded, you’re ready to dive into the ecosystem. SuiVision and Suiscan are the top 2 Sui blockchain explorers and are great places to start your journey. Both explorers give you insight into Sui ecosystem DeFi protocols, coins, NFT marketplaces, validators, analytics, and more.
DeFi on Sui
The Sui DeFi ecosystem is booming as there’s ton of great options for making swaps, earning yield, liquid staking, and trading ecosystem tokens. Below, we’ll highlight the top DEXs, DEX aggregators, lending protocols, and liquid staking platform.
Top DEXs on Sui
Momentum Finance – The new kid to the Sui Blockchain in terms of top options for making swaps and liquidity pools. Momentum is growing at a rapid pace and has a confirmed airdrop for early participants.
NODO – AI powered vaults that make DeFi on Sui easy.
Aftermath Finance – A full DeFi platform built on Sui, designed to provide a comprehensive suite of trading, liquid staking, and liquidity solutions with a user experience comparable to centralized exchanges.
Cetus Protocol – One of the original Sui DEXs and DeFi hubs.
7K Smart Trading – A leading decentralized exchange aggregator on Sui, designed to optimize trading by providing the best swap rates, minimal slippage, and low gas fees.
Turbos Finance – The original Sui native DEX and meme coin launchpad in Turbos Fun.
FlowX Finance – DEX and liquidity aggregator built on Sui, designed to provide a seamless, efficient, and user-friendly DeFi experience.
Sui Lending and Borrowing Protocols
These platforms offer competitive yields and serve as the backbone of Sui’s DeFi ecosystem.
Suilend – A top decentralized lending and borrowing protocol built on the Sui blockchain. Suilend leverages Sui’s high-performance, low-latency infrastructure and Move programming language to offer secure, efficient, and user-friendly DeFi services.
NAVI Protocol – A leading Sui DeFi liquidity protocol designed to provide a comprehensive, user-friendly platform for lending, borrowing, liquid staking, and cross-chain trading.
Scallop – A next-generation Sui DeFi protocol focusing on lending, borrowing, and asset management with institutional-grade quality, enhanced composability, and robust security.
Sui Liquid Staking Solutions
Liquid staking SUI allows users to earn staking rewards while maintaining liquidity for DeFi activities. You’ll find a bunch of great options for liquid staking on Sui and below are some of my favorites.
Haedal Protocol – A leading Sui liquid staking platform that enables users to stake SUI and WAL tokens, contributing to Sui’s governance and decentralization, while receiving yield-bearing liquid staking tokens (LSTs) like haSUI and haWAL.
Volo – Growing liquid staking platform on Sui with a confirmed airdrop to participants in the near future.
SpringSui – A liquid staking standard and token developed by Suilend. It aims to enhance staking flexibility by allowing users to stake SUI tokens and receive sSUI liquid staking token that earns rewards while remaining usable in DeFi applications.
Aftermath Finance – Users stake SUI tokens through Aftermath Finance to mint afSUI, a yield-bearing LST that accrues staking rewards. afSUI is fungible and composable, designed to mirror SUI’s utility, allowing users to trade, deposit into liquidity pools, use as collateral, or bridge to other blockchains without losing staking rewards.
Decentralized Perpetual Trading Trading Platforms on Sui
Decentralized perpetual futures platforms, built on Sui, offer significant advantages for cryptocurrency trading compared to centralized exchanges (CEXs). Below are the top DeFi perps trading platforms on Sui…
Bluefin – Bluefin Pro supports perpetual futures contracts, allowing traders to speculate on assets like BTC, ETH, SOL, SUI, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Aptos, Walrus, DeepBook, and Sei without owning them or facing expiration dates.
Typus Finance – Trade perps and options with real yield on Sui.
ZO Perps – A next-generation decentralized perpetual futures protocol built on the Sui blockchain, designed to offer intelligent, high-performance trading with sub-second finality, full on-chain transparency, and zero compromises. It aims to provide a CEX-like experience while leveraging Sui’s scalability and security.
Decentralized Domain Names: Sui Name Service (SuiNS)
Sui Name Service (SuiNS) is a decentralized naming system designed to simplify blockchain interactions by replacing complex wallet addresses with human-readable domain names, such as “stouy.sui”. Similar to ENS on Ethereum, SuiNS enhances user experience, security, and digital identity ownership within the Sui ecosystem, supporting applications like DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and social platforms.
Native Sui Trading and Analytics Platforms
There are a bunch of great options for trading Sui meme coins and utility tokens. The 3 platforms below are all built on Sui and focus on ecosystem coins.
Noodles Finance – A new DeFi trading and analytics platform for Sui ecosystem tokens. The Noodles Finance app combines token analytics and trading functionalities into a single platform. You can manage your portfolio and make swaps on the Noodles platform.
Nexa – Advanced data analytics and trading platform for Sui ecosystem tokens. Nexa makes it easy to see trending and you can trade them with one-click. The portfolio analytics tool on Nexa is a great way to manage your Sui assets.
RaidenX – The premier trading bot platform for Sui, similar to BullX on Solana. RaidenX is a high-performance, AI-powered trading bot platform designed to streamline trading, particularly for meme coins and AI agent tokens within the Sui ecosystem. It functions as a cross-platform trading terminal, offering real-time insights, automation, and a suite of tools to enhance trading efficiency.
Sui NFT Ecosystem
NFTs on Sui have been gaining momentum in 2025. TradePort is currently the top marketplace for minting and trading Sui NFTs however, Hokko, and Ganbitera are emerging competitors. Some of the top NFT collections on Sui are…
- Popkins – An NFT collection launched by Claynosaurz (blue chip Solana NFT project) on the Sui blockchain in May 2025, featuring 25,000 unique digital collectibles designed to expand the Claynosaurz universe.
- Doonies – Los Doonies is a collection of 4,444 PFP NFTs on Sui developed by Dead Skull Society. It minted out quick in early April 2025. Inspired by the 80s and 90s skate punk era, it features rebellious, nostalgic digital art with approximately 200 traits, enabling nearly 30 billion unique combinations.
- MF Squid Market – A prominent NFT collection on Sui developed by the Ika team. MF Squid Market launched in early March 2025 and consists of 10,000 unique NFTs. It’s celebrated as the largest and most successful NFT campaign in Sui’s history, raising over 1.4 million SUI. MF Squid Market is closely tied to the highly anticipated Ika airdrop.
- Prime Machin – A blue-chip NFT collection on Sui developed by Studio Mirai. Prime Machin consists of 3,333 manga-inspired 2D Profile Picture robots, stored on-chain in 4K resolution.
- Mystic Yetis – Developed by Lofi The Yeti meme coin team, Mystic Yetis is a community-driven initiative blending Web3 innovation with cultural and charitable goals. Minted on April 22, 2025, the collection consists of 3,333 unique yeti-themed Profile Picture NFTs, designed to serve as a gateway to the “Yeti Experience”.
- Fuddies – One of the most iconic and foundational NFT collections on the Sui blockchain, launched by a community-driven team during Sui’s mainnet debut in May 2023. Comprising 10,000 unique owl-themed PFP NFTs, Fuddies embody the “FUD” (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) meme culture, celebrating resilience in the crypto community.
Pawtato Finance DeFi dApp Aggregator and Wallet Manager
Pawtato Finance is a free wallet manager tool for that Sui ecosystem that I recommend using from day 1. It launched in December 2024 as a bootstrapped project and has rapidly grown to serve over 100,000 users. Pawtato Finance offers real-time notifications, portfolio tracking, and advanced analytics to simplify DeFi interactions.
Additional Pawtato Finance features include…
- Integrated token swap functionality
- Sui ecosystem Airdrops tracking
- Sui NFT launch calendar
Get Started in the Sui Ecosystem Today
Now is a great time to dive into the Sui ecosystem as active participants are often rewarded. If Sui continues it’s parabolic growth, users that are familiar with ecosystem DeFi protocols and top NFT collections are in prime position to profit. Therefore, I encourage you to utilize the tools and platforms outlined in this Sui guide. If you take action now, you’ll be well-positioned to navigate and capitalize on opportunities within this promising layer 1 blockchain ecosystem.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
