Searcher Dominance on Sui: What the Data Shows
MEV activity on Sui appears highly concentrated among a small number of participants. We look at what this means for the ecosystem and why competitive execution infrastructure matters.
On Ethereum, the MEV landscape is competitive. The top searcher in any given strategy (say, CEX-DEX arbitrage or liquidations) might capture 20-30% of available opportunities. Dozens of searchers compete for the same trades, and the resulting competition compresses margins and, in theory, returns value to users through tighter pricing.
On Sui, the picture looks quite different. Our analysis suggests that MEV activity is heavily concentrated, with a small number of addresses accounting for the vast majority of identified MEV transactions.
What the data suggests
Across the MEV transactions we have analyzed, the concentration is striking. A handful of addresses dominate, while hundreds of others show only sporadic activity. The long tail is effectively dormant.
The dominant activity is primarily cross-pool arbitrage: correcting price dislocations across Cetus, Turbos, DeepBook, and other venues through multi-leg swaps within single programmable transaction blocks.
Why this concentration likely exists
Several factors could explain this level of concentration. First, Sui is a younger chain than Ethereum, and its MEV ecosystem is correspondingly less mature. On Ethereum, MEV became competitive over years as more participants entered the market and tooling improved. Sui has not yet reached that equilibrium.
Second, the infrastructure requirements for MEV on Sui are non-trivial. Maintaining real-time state across dozens of liquidity pools and constructing optimal multi-hop routes requires meaningful engineering investment. On a chain where few participants have built this infrastructure, early movers can enjoy outsized returns.
Third, the absence of a formalized auction mechanism means there is no neutral venue for searchers to compete on equal footing. On Ethereum, MEV-Boost and its associated relay infrastructure create a competitive auction for block space. Sui does not yet have an equivalent, which tends to favor participants with latency and infrastructure advantages.
What this could mean for the ecosystem
Concentrated MEV extraction has potential consequences worth considering. When competition among searchers is limited, there is less pressure to return value to users. On Ethereum, competition among searchers has driven innovations like backrunning auctions, where a portion of extracted value flows back to protocols or users.
For liquidity providers, concentration may mean that price corrections happen efficiently, but the value of those corrections accrues disproportionately to a small number of participants rather than being shared more broadly.
For the ecosystem as a whole, depending on a small number of participants for price consistency across venues introduces fragility. A more distributed landscape would likely be healthier long-term.
Looking ahead
As Sui's DeFi ecosystem grows and the value at stake increases, we would expect the MEV landscape to become more competitive over time. Whether that happens organically or requires new infrastructure remains to be seen.
What seems clear is that visibility matters. Understanding the current state of execution on Sui, who is participating and how, is a prerequisite for building systems that distribute value more equitably. That is what we are working on at Birdai.