If market cap measured effort, Suiwould be ahead of NEARand this article wouldnt exist.
It measures something else. Right now the market values NEAR at roughly $1.8 billion more than Sui, while Sui quietly beats it on TVL, daily users and DEX volume. I spent time with the numbers, and the gap says a lot about what investors actually pay for.
NEAR Wins The Market Cap Race By $1.8 Billion
On DefiLlama‘s NEAR token page, NEAR trades at $5.02 with a market cap of $6.548 billion. Sui’s token page shows SUI at $1.15 and a market cap of $4.72 billion. That makes NEAR about 38% larger by market cap.
On price action alone, you would guess NEAR is the busier network. I dont think that guess survives a look at the chain data.
Sui Doubles NEAR On Every Activity Metric
DefiLlamas Sui chain dashboard and NEAR chain dashboard show the same pattern in every category I checked:
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- TVL:Sui holds $542.11 million against NEARs $240.12 million, about 2.3x more.
- Active addresses (24h):Sui has 127,942 against NEARs 63,589, roughly double.
- DEX volume (24h):Sui does $83.56 million against NEARs $36.56 million, close to 2.7x more (see the Sui DEX page and NEAR DEX page).
- Transactions (24h):Sui processes 31.58 million against NEARs 1.22 million.
Sui also has a larger stablecoin base, at $481 million against $85.81 million on NEAR. Money, users and trading all sit more heavily on Sui.
Fully Diluted Value Flips The Story
The first thing I checked was token supply, because that is where the gap starts to make sense. DefiLlama lists Sui‘s fully diluted value at $11.79 billion, well above its $4.83 billion market cap. By my math, only about 41% of Sui’s total value is circulating today. NEARs FDV and market cap are both $6.653 billion, so there is nothing left to unlock.
On a fully diluted basis, Sui is the larger project by a wide margin, around 1.8 times NEAR. NEARs lead only exists on the circulating number. I think this is the most overlooked piece of the comparison.
Why Traders Keep Paying Up For NEAR
Circulating supply explains part of it, but it doesn‘t explain the premium on its own. My read is that NEAR is priced on story and momentum more than on current usage. DefiLlama’s protocol table shows NEAR Intents among its top applications, and a chain with a live narrative attracts buyers before the metrics catch up. The tokens recent run also shows on the chain. Protocols such as Rhea Finance and Meta Pool show one-month TVL gains of 127% and 173%.
The weakness shows up in the trading data. NEARs 7-day DEX volume of $176.32 million is down 67.52% week on week, so the activity behind the price is thinner than the price suggests. Its yearly fee picture also looks light next to its valuation. DefiLlama shows just $8,274 in chain fees over 24 hours.
Comparing valuation to locked capital makes the point. Sui has about 11 cents of TVL for every dollar of market cap. NEAR has about 3.6 cents. Buyers are clearly paying more per dollar of real DeFi activity on NEAR.
What Is Actually Driving Suis Lead In DeFi
Sui‘s advantage comes from the depth of its DeFi stack. NAVI Protocol holds $182.78 million and Suilend $179.16 million, and both are real lending markets. Current, Haedal and Cetus add more, and Sui’s DEX volume is up 104% week on week. NEARs TVL, by contrast, leans heavily on Rhea Finance and its liquid staking products, Meta Pool and LiNEAR.
There is also a bigger user base on Sui, and that base is doing more per person. More than 127,000 daily addresses generating over 31 million transactions suggests a chain with real consumer and trading traffic. That is where a large share of Suis stablecoin balance and DEX flow comes from.
I would add one caution. Sui is not at its peak. CoinStats reported that Sui‘s TVL was as high as $2.6 billion in October 2025, so today’s $542 million is far below that level. Sui leads NEAR, but it is recovering, not soaring.