💧 This Week in Sui #1: Gasless Stablecoins Go Live

Hey there 👋, welcome to the first issue of This Week in Sui.

You may remember that last crypto cycle I ran This Week in Solana after buying SOL under $20, attending Breakpoint, and writing extensively about the ecosystem. I made 10x that cycle.

You were on that list, or signed up via the waitlist on X, and I'm looking to do it again, having bought SUI sub $1. I posted why I’m bullish on Sui this cycle in the Redundant community (TLDR: superior tech, real product-market fit in payments + AI, and strong institutional alignment).

Before we dive in: if you also subscribe to my other newsletter Redundant, no need to worry about inbox overload. I only post there occasionally when I have something worth saying (barely once a month), so this won't double your emails from me. And if you're curious about my beehiiv chops, I was brought in by The Daily Bone (previously The Nifty) to redesign their crypto newsletter last cycle. I built them a full new template and sample issue here. They went a different direction. You can see what they left on the table here.

SUI (main asset) - $1.10 (-2.4%)

WAL (data platform) - $0.06846 (-13.33%)

DEEP (financial stack) - $0.03412 (-0.55%)

LOFI (community token) - $0.004955 (-10.62%)

TVL: $594M (DeFiLlama)

Stablecoins MC: $576M (DeFiLlama)

After a 40% move the previous week to $1.4, the SUI ecosystem has been consolidating

Yesterday, Sui rolled out protocol-level zero-gas transfers for stablecoins.

Users can now send assets like USDC, FDUSD, USDsui (powered by Bridge + Stripe), and others peer-to-peer with zero $SUI gas fees — as seamless as a text message, with sub-second finality.

This is more than a UX win. It directly tackles one of crypto’s longest-standing onboarding killers: needing native gas tokens for basic transfers.

Sui Co-founder @EmanAbio framed it as foundational for the machine economy, enabling frictionless movement by humans and autonomous agents alike. Co-founder @EvanWeb3 called out something more practical: the elimination of gas-out scenarios that have broken app integrations for years.

Sui is executing on payments at internet scale. Expect this to accelerate stablecoin volume, remittances, payroll, and agentic flows in the weeks ahead.

💧 Stablecoin momentum intensifies: Multiple projects (Bridge, Momentum, Suilend) celebrated the gasless rollout. Lower barriers for capital movement and DeFi composability across the ecosystem.

📈 SUIG treasury grows: Sui Group Holdings increased holdings to 108,793,779 $SUI as of May 19, signalling strong alignment with ecosystem growth.

🔒 DeFi resilience: Suilend highlighted its leading UX and security amid broader activity, despite a temporary PythNet frontend impact. Funds safe.

🌍 Adoption signals: @SuiNetwork emphasised "adoption maxxing" and better workflows, with community and builders amplifying the gasless narrative across high-engagement posts.

💰 Current Finance gains traction: First project in Sui Foundation’s DeFi Moonshots Program, Current is seeing strong usage on Multiply (leveraged yield) with USDC/USDsui loops yielding 26–29% APR. Currently holds ~$8.8M in USDsui at 72% utilization and is running a 3,000 $SUI rewards campaign with Slush Wallet.

Agentic finance is not future tense, it’s happening now on Sui.

Early in the week (May 15), $SUIG ( ▼ 2.63% ) co-led a $15M round for nof1 (AI trading lab building frontier models for financial markets) and made a strategic investment in Recursive ($650M round, $4B+ valuation, focused on recursive self-improving AI).

Marius Barnett articulated the thesis perfectly:

Nof1’s work on purpose-built trading agents (with web search, extended reasoning, multi-step execution) pairs naturally with Sui’s high-speed settlement and now gasless stablecoin rails. SUIG plans to deploy these models for treasury yield. This convergence creates programmable, autonomous economies — exactly where Sui’s architecture shines.

Expect more agent-to-agent flows, AI-driven DeFi strategies, and on-chain execution layers to leverage these capabilities.

Here are standout open roles from the Sui ecosystem job board (as of this week):

Additional opportunities in Ecosystem Growth, Developer Relations, Content/Marketing, and AI-related engineering roles are live. Strong demand for builders who understand high-performance chains and agentic applications.

LOFI continues to show strong grassroots energy this week.

The Yeti community remains one of the most active and engaged groups in Sui, with ambassadors (@Derekjaden_Sui, @King_Breezyy and many others) and members consistently interacting across timelines.

The vibe is very much “chill but committed” — lots of casual engagement, mutual support, and community building. Founder activity and ambassador coordination suggest LOFI is maintaining solid momentum as THE community-driven token/project on Sui.

This kind of dedicated, fun culture is exactly what helps projects stay resilient during consolidation periods.

The gasless stablecoin upgrade sets the stage for accelerated adoption in payments and agentic finance. Watch for:

Builders and capital are flowing to chains that remove friction and enable new primitives. Sui is delivering.

— Richard Patey (@richardpatey)

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.