Sui is a rapidly developing ecosystem that is gaining traction, and in which there are various DeFi protocols on which you can earn passive yield on your tokens. Some DeFi options to explore including Volo for its liquid staking function, Cetus Protocol for its vaults, and Navi for a leveraged earning strategy, or also for its more straightforward lending markets.
There’s a lot of focus on Solana right now, along with questions around Ethereum, but over in the wings Sui has quietly been making sizeable gains and Sui DeFi looks good to potentially accelerate in the coming months. That in mind, let’s dip into the Sui ecosystem, and pick up on some yield-earning strategies you can start using right now.
SUI Price and Network Growth
Starting with a look at performance and growth, the SUI token has soared in price this month, from $1.97 at the start of November, to a new ATH of $3.92 last weekend, and its market cap now stands at $10.4 billion. At the same time, TVL on Sui has grown to $1.6 billion, having been at around $557 million three months ago.
Transfer SUI to a SUI Wallet
In order to start earning in the Sui DeFi ecosystem you’ll of course need some SUI tokens, which you can buy on any major exchange, and you’ll need to download a Sui wallet to transfer your tokens into so that you can interact onchain, and for that purpose Suiet is an easy-to-use, browser-extension option.
Also, before we continue please note that when you interact with DeFi protocols, you’re exposed to risks including smart contract exploits, frontend attacks, systemic risks across DeFi and crypto, and market volatility.
Stake SUI for vSUI
To begin, we’re going to stake some SUI, and to do that we can use a protocol called Volo. This protocol offers liquid staking, which means you can stake your SUI tokens and receive a Liquid Staking Token called vSUI in return, so then although the SUI is locked up, you still have flexibility through being able to utilize the vSUI.
To start this process, go to Volo, and click where it says Stake Here.
You can then connect up your wallet, enter the amount to stake–from a minimum of 1 SUI and with no upper limit, and it will show you how much vSUI you’ll receive in return.
Then you just need to click the Stake button and approve the transaction in your wallet, and with that done, you will then immediately start earning rewards.
If you then also check your wallet after staking on Volo, you’ll see that you now have some vSUI tokens. Alternatively, another way to acquire vSUI, but without actually staking, is by trading for it using a SUI DEX, and some protocol options in that case are Cetus and Turbos Finance.
Earn on Your vSUI Tokens
Having acquired vSUI, you can now use it to earn further rewards on protocols that are part of the Volo ecosystem, so let’s run through a first easy option to explore.
If you go to Cetus Protocol, open the app and check the Vaults page there (which you’ll find under the Earn tab), you’ll be presented with three available Vault options, one of which is for vSUI-SUI.
If you then click on the Deposit button for that Vault, you can proceed to connect your wallet, check the APY–which is currently 7.77%–and you’ll see that you can either deposit a single asset, vSUI or SUI, or you can deposit both assets….
