Sui Closes March with Bitcoin Lending Protocol, Native Stablecoin, and a Trillion Dollars in Transfers
In one of its most active months to date, Sui brought a new Bitcoin finance layer, a yield-sharing stablecoin, expanded compliance tooling, and staking access for 45+ million Revolut users.
The Sui blockchain network ended the first quarter of 2026 with a concentrated burst of infrastructure announcements. In March, the network launched a Bitcoin-native lending protocol on devnet, brought its native stablecoin to mainnet, crossed a cumulative $1 trillion in stablecoin transfer volume, and extended its developer toolset with audited contract libraries and upgraded RPC infrastructure. The developments collectively signal that Sui's build-out phase is accelerating, even as its total value locked sits well below its cycle peak amid broader market softness.
Bitcoin Lending Arrives on Sui, Still in Testing
The headline announcement was Hashi, a protocol designed to let Bitcoin holders borrow stablecoins against their BTC, or lend into the protocol, without selling their underlying Bitcoin.
Hashi launched on Sui's devnet in March, meaning it is currently in a testing environment rather than available for live capital. Mainnet deployment is expected later in 2026.
The protocol uses Multi-Party Computation and Sui smart contracts to move native BTC across chains while keeping collateral verifiable on-chain. More than 20 institutional partners signed on for the devnet phase, including BitGo for custody, Bullish for liquidity, FalconX for prime brokerage, Erebor Bank (an OCC-chartered U.S. bank), Fordefi, and Ledger.
Security audits were conducted by Asymptotic, Certora (using formal verification), and OtterSec, with insurance coverage provided by Soter.
Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun framed the opportunity in terms of untapped scale: "Think of Hashi as the unlock for developers to design solutions opening access to trillions in BTC liquidity." The context behind that framing is significant. Bitcoin's market capitalization exceeds $1.4 trillion, but less than 0.5% of that supply, roughly $3.07 billion, is currently deployed in DeFi protocols.
Hashi is positioned to capture institutional demand that prior synthetic BTC products like wrapped Bitcoin struggled to satisfy, largely due to collateral transparency concerns.
USDsui and a Different Model for Stablecoin Yield
Sui's native stablecoin, USDsui, went live on mainnet on March 4. It is issued by Bridge, a stablecoin platform acquired by Stripe in 2025. The structural distinction from dominant stablecoins like USDT is that Treasury yield generated by USDsui's backing assets can be redirected back into the Sui ecosystem, through SUI token buybacks and burns, DeFi protocol deployment, or AMM liquidity incentivization.
Abiodun described the current stablecoin market as one where "yield is largely kept to external agencies," adding that with USDsui, "yield effectively can get funneled back from the foundation straight to the Sui ecosystem." USDsui is also interoperable with other Bridge-powered stablecoins on Phantom, Hyperliquid, and MetaMask through Bridge's infrastructure.
It is one of five stablecoins supported by the Hashi devnet, alongside FDUSD, USDC, eSui Dollar, and XAUm, a gold-backed token.
Volume, Compliance, and Developer Infrastructure
Sui's cumulative stablecoin transfer volume crossed $1 trillion in March, though that figure has been accumulating since August 2024. The more recent data point is January 2026 alone, which recorded over $111 billion in stablecoin transactions. For context, the August through September 2025 period combined reached $412 billion, but that represented an exceptional two-month spike rather than a sustained baseline, making January's single-month figure the more reliable indicator of recent momentum.
TVL on the network reached a cycle peak of $2.6 billion but sits closer to $562 million currently, according to DefiLlama, reflecting broader market volatility across the DeFi sector.
On the compliance side, Chainalysis extended full coverage to Sui and all its fungible tokens on March 26, integrating support into its KYT (Know Your Transaction) monitoring product and Reactor, its fund-tracing investigation platform. Developer tooling also advanced with GraphQL RPC and an archival data store both reaching general availability. OpenZeppelin released a foundational Move contract library for Sui, including a DeFi Math Library containing 12 core functions and an access management framework. OpenZeppelin's contracts have secured over $30 trillion in onchain value across other chains, making its entry into the Move and Sui ecosystem a meaningful signal for institutional developers.
Walrus, Sui's decentralized storage protocol, reached its one-year mainnet anniversary in March with 467TB of data stored and more than 200 projects building on the network. It now ranks as the second-largest decentralized storage protocol globally, a milestone with particular relevance for developer communities across Sub-Saharan Africa, where decentralized infrastructure is a growing area of focus.
What This Means Outside the United States
For users in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, several of March's announcements carry specific weight. While no Sui-specific adoption data exists for these regions yet, broader stablecoin trends provide context for why these announcements matter: stablecoins now account for roughly 43% of all crypto transaction volume across Sub-Saharan Africa, with year-over-year growth of around 180%, driven by remittances, merchant payments, and savings in dollar-pegged assets.
Chainalysis coverage matters in this context: fintechs and regulated institutions in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria increasingly require KYT-compatible chains to meet compliance thresholds. Sui's Chainalysis integration removes a barrier that had made the network a harder sell for those operators.
Erebor Bank's OCC charter also positions the Hashi ecosystem to support regulated dollar on and off-ramps relevant to cross-border payment corridors, including those serving African remittance corridors over the medium term.
Meanwhile, SUI staking going live on Revolut on March 24, at 1.93% APY, put the token within reach of Revolut's 45+ million global users.
The integration is custodial, meaning Revolut manages private keys rather than users, a point worth noting for communities where self-custody is a priority. Revolut has been expanding into South Asian and select African markets, and the low-friction staking option lowers the entry point for retail participants who would otherwise avoid the technical overhead of direct on-chain staking. The launch carries particular relevance in India, which leads the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index for the sixth consecutive year, and where Revolut's growing footprint makes the staking integration especially accessible. Pakistan and Bangladesh, where remittance flows and stablecoin adoption are both expanding, stand to benefit from the broader suite of March announcements as well.
What Comes Next
Hashi's mainnet timeline, USDsui's adoption curve, and whether Sui's TVL recovers from current levels will be the metrics to watch through the second quarter. The EVE Frontier game migration to Sui also completed its initial phase in March. CCP Games, the studio behind EVE Online, opened a programmable layer for third-party developers and co-hosted an $80,000 developer hackathon alongside the Sui Foundation at the end of March, followed by a free trial launch on April 1. Separately, "Current" was selected as the first team for Sui's DeFi Moonshots Program, signaling the network's continued effort to attract specialized DeFi builders.
The network's infrastructure depth has grown considerably. The question entering Q2 is whether user and capital activity follow.