Sui Foundation Denies Accusations Of Insider Token Sales

The Sui Foundation has denied accusations that project insiders have sold $400 million worth of SUI tokens during the token’s recent meteoric rally.

On Oct. 14, the Sui Foundation tweeted that no employees or investors from Mysten Labs, Sui's core contributor, or the foundation, sold the tokens in question.

“No insiders, neither employees of the Foundation or Mysten Labs, nor ML investors, have sold $400 million worth of tokens during this period, either individually or combined,” the Sui Foundation said. “Insiders have not been involved in any preemptive selling or violation of lockups and the circulating supply schedule.”

The Sui Foundation suggested that the sales likely came from an infrastructure partner whose tokens are subject to a vesting schedule.

“All token lockups are enforced by qualified custodians and continuously monitored by the Sui Foundation, and this partner is in compliance,” the Sui Foundation said.

The price of SUI surged more than 108% over the past 30 days, positioning it the token as the 21st-largest cryptocurrency with a nearly $6.18 billion market cap, according to The Defiant’s crypto price feeds.

SUI last changed hands for $2.24 after tagged an all-time high of $2.35 on Oct. 13.

Conspicuous sales

The foundation’s comments came after Lightcrypto, a pseudonymous crypto analyst, alleged that some of the project’s insiders had offloaded$400 million worth of tokens during SUI’s recent rally.

On Oct. 13, Lightycrypto flagged that wallets closely associated with the Sui Foundation were increasingly offloading tokens in recent weeks. The analyst shared a chart showing a recent increase in the cumulative distribution of SUI tokens issued to large wallets participating in the project’s 2023 initial coin offering.

“The people who arguably know this token’s value best are unloading hundreds of millions of dollars of token into less informed buyers chasing momentum,” Lightcrypto said. “With most of these games where retail buys from insiders, there is only one ending.”

SUI surge

Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder of Mysten Labs, told The Defiant that SUI is soaring amid a wave of web3 projects migrating onto Sui after encountering scalability challenges on other networks, especially within the gaming sector.

“We've seen an increased number of … games who have gone to try things on other platforms, who have been promised scale,” Abiodun said. “As soon as it gets a taste or hint of success, the gas fees go through the roof and the game is no longer workable… [Sui] is seeing product market fit because it can do things other platforms can't.”