The Sui Foundation is a non-profit organization established in 2022 to support the growth of the Sui blockchain ecosystem. It operates independently from Mysten Labs, the company that built the Sui Layer 1 network, though the two organizations share a common mission: accelerating adoption of the Move-based smart contract platform. The Foundation manages grants, ecosystem investments, and developer programs funded in part from the SUI token treasury allocation set at the network's genesis.
Sui mainnet launched in May 2023 after a period of testnet development. The Foundation quickly moved to deploy capital toward infrastructure, DeFi primitives, and consumer applications that would give the chain economic activity and user traffic. Its investment and grant activity spans early-stage protocol teams through to larger ecosystem partnerships, with a particular emphasis on projects that require native liquidity depth or on-chain tooling to function.
The Foundation's retail ROI metric of 0.07 reflects the difficult market conditions that greeted many Sui ecosystem tokens after their initial listings. Several Foundation-backed projects launched during a period of elevated valuations in 2023 and 2024, and secondary market performance was mixed. This is a common pattern for foundation-led ecosystem funds, which prioritize network utility over return optimization.
Notable investments
- Cetus Protocol – a concentrated liquidity DEX and the primary trading venue on Sui. The Foundation supported Cetus as a core liquidity layer for the chain.
- DeepBook – a native central limit order book built directly into the Sui framework, providing shared liquidity infrastructure for other protocols.
- Scallop – a money market protocol on Sui offering lending and borrowing against native assets.
- Aftermath Finance – a DeFi aggregator and AMM focused on capital efficiency within the Sui ecosystem.
- BlueMove – an NFT marketplace and launchpad for Sui-native collections, targeting both creators and collectors.
- Sui Name Service (SuiNS) – a domain name system for the Sui chain, enabling human-readable wallet addresses.
- Bucket Protocol – an overcollateralized stablecoin protocol issuing BUCK against Sui-based collateral.
- Turbos Finance – a concentrated liquidity DEX competing with Cetus for trading volume on the network.
Public disclosure of specific grant amounts and equity terms is limited. The Foundation does not publish a detailed portfolio breakdown in the way a traditional venture fund would.
Team
Greg Siourounis serves as Executive Director of the Sui Foundation. He previously held leadership roles at the Diem Association (formerly Facebook's Libra project). Jameel Khalfan leads ecosystem development efforts. The Foundation's work is closely coordinated with Mysten Labs, whose founding team includes Evan Cheng (CEO, former Meta engineering director), Sam Blackshear (CTO, creator of the Move language), Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis, and Kostas Chalkias. Most of the core team previously worked on the Diem project at Meta before its cancellation in 2022.
Recent activity
In 2024 and into 2025, the Sui Foundation expanded its grants program to cover gaming and consumer applications alongside DeFi infrastructure. The chain saw notable TVL growth in 2024, at points entering the top 10 chains by on-chain value according to DeFiLlama. The Foundation also pushed into institutional partnerships to bring real-world asset protocols and payment infrastructure to Sui. Geographic focus has been global, with meaningful developer traction in Asia, particularly South Korea and Southeast Asia.
One notable challenge came in May 2024 when Cetus Protocol – among the Foundation's most prominent supported projects – suffered a major smart contract exploit that drained approximately $220 million from its pools. The incident, and the subsequent on-chain governance response to freeze attacker funds, raised questions about decentralization that the Foundation has worked to address since. Details of recovery compensation arrangements remain partially public via suifoundation.org announcements.
The Sui Foundation's outlook is tied directly to Sui's ability to capture sustained developer and user activity. The chain competes with Aptos – built by another Diem alumni team using a similar Move-based architecture – as well as with Solana and the broader EVM ecosystem for application developers. Foundation-backed TVL growth has been genuine, but whether it translates into durable economic activity beyond incentive programs is the key open question for 2025 and beyond.
