Is Sui DEX's volume something you can buy, but not the habit? Is this competition shifting from faster and cheaper to more product-centric?
Recently, while monitoring Sui's DEX, one observation has become increasingly clear: volume can be bought with subsidies, but habit cannot.
A day's data can look impressive, but whether users return daily and use it as a regular tool is the key to success in the second half.
Therefore, I'm more focused on a trend: the competition in Sui's DEX market is shifting from faster and cheaper to more product-centric. That is, it's not just about swaps, but how you manage positions, how you collaborate on trades, how you attract new users through content, and ultimately, how you monetize.
This is also why I've been following @ferra_protocol recently. They write it very simply: Portfolio v2 / Trading Guild / Yapping (YouTube) / Premium – this is essentially a product matrix:
Market monitoring and management → Organized trading → Content distribution for customer acquisition → Paid monetization. It may not be the most comfortable, but if it works, the competitive advantage becomes more like a product than an APR (Advanced Performance Rate).
Quest2Earn acts more like glue here; it's not just a simple task board, but a behavioral economic system that uses rules to train passersby to return daily.
I noticed two very subtle design details in the rules that demonstrate they're not just randomly piling up numbers:
▷ LP holdings must meet a certain duration to claim bonuses (it's not just about posting).
▷ Bonuses expire if not claimed before 00:00 UTC each day, like daily settlements in a game, forcibly pulling you back to a daily update rhythm.
Of course, the more sophisticated the system, the more vulnerable it is to two things:
First, it risks being optimized to the point of distortion by strategic players;
Second, anti-cheating measures and parameter scheduling may fall behind, ultimately turning into a score-farming frenzy. The terms explicitly prohibit scripts/volume manipulation, indicating they themselves understand how sensitive this area is.
Therefore, I will monitor Ferra as a case study. If it can distinguish between real trading, real LPs, and real social contributions without losing control, then it's not just creating DEX task activities, but building a sustainable growth hub on Sui.