The Sui layer 1 blockchain’s native token, SUI, has surged more than 14% in the past 24 hours, significantly outperforming bitcoin. and ether as traders have seized on speculation that layer 1 blockchain could one day support privacy-preserving transactions.
The move stood out in an otherwise sluggish market. Bitcoin rose about 1% during the same period, while ether gained about 1.2%, leaving SUI as the best-performing large-cap company of the day. This divergence indicates a token-specific catalyst rather than a generalized move toward risk.
Research-led gathering
Sui’s rally is likely rooted in research, not a product launch. A recent article co-authored by Mysten Labs, which is the lead creator and developer of the Sui blockchain, explained how modern blockchains can integrate privacy features without fully adopting the design of legacy privacy coins.
The paper, structured as a systematization of knowledge (an academic survey of existing work), defined a formal framework for comparing privacy models across blockchains, categorizing privacy into distinct levels ranging from basic privacy, where transaction amounts are hidden, to k-anonymity and full anonymity, which progressively obscure the identities of senders and recipients rather than proposing a single new protocol.
It places Sui firmly in the account-based model, alongside Ethereum and Solana, and explores how such systems could implement confidential balances, limited anonymity sets, or the disassociation of sender and receiver using cryptographic primitives such as homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs.
The document mainly emphasizes compromises. Strong privacy guarantees tend to increase computational load, complicate support for some clients designed to run in resource-scarce environments, and raise regulatory concerns.
Rotation to digital money
Throughout 2025, investors were increasingly looking for “countercyclical value.” During the second half of 2025, privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero significantly outperformed the broader crypto markets, even as bitcoin and ether struggled amid macroeconomic pressure and dollar strength.
Analysts have described this shift as a rotation toward digital cash, assets designed for use rather than yield, where zero-knowledge proofs enable privacy without sacrificing settlement speed or selective compliance. This rebound has been interpreted less as a speculative excess and more as a signal that the demand for financial privacy is re-emerging as a central theme in the market.
While the document does not lay out a timeline for the launch of a privacy token for the blockchain, nor does it present any new technology, investors hope it is a signal for what is to come.
