Raoul Pal expects the smart contract market to shrink to a handful of winners, and he places Sui among them. Speaking on the Milk Road podcast, the Real Vision co-founder, who sits on the board of the Sui Foundation, said the token is not yet priced for that outcome.
Why Layer 1s Will Consolidate
Pal pointed to cloud computing and programming languages, where three to five leaders capture most of the market while specialists fill the long tail. He expects blockchains to follow the same pattern.
Ethereum leads that group in his view. According to Pal, it holds about 70% of the stablecoin market, more than 70% of DeFi and nearly all of the high-end NFT market. His valuation test is simple: estimate how much value would disappear if the network were switched off. Across stablecoins, DeFi, tokenized assets and digital art, he puts that figure above $1 trillion, well beyond ETH’s current market value.
Solana, he said, won the speed and cost race after Ethereum’s congested 2021 NFT boom. It is now the home of memecoins, which Pal treats as a live test of instant capital formation. He cited a conversation with Solana co-founder, who told him about 240,000 tokens launch on the network each day, most of them by machines and AI agents.
The Case For Sui
Pal’s argument rests on three features:
- Programmable transaction blocks: Up to 1,024 actions in one transaction, letting an AI agent hold a wallet, move across several DeFi protocols and loop positions in a single step.
- Zero-fee stablecoin transfers: Designed to remove friction for machine payments.
- Privacy and quantum readiness: Features he considers essential before institutions commit capital.
He rejected criticism that Sui earns little in fees, arguing that high fees signal an inefficient chain and that a network’s value lies in what gets built on it.
What Could Move The Price
Sui has roughly 150,000 to 250,000 daily active users, according to Pal. Reaching 1 million would mean a far bigger shift for Sui than for Solana, which already has a much larger user base. He named stablecoin growth and a gold-linked lending product as possible sources of fresh TVL.
Pal also left room for others, saying that Avalanche could make the top group and that Hyperliquid stands out as a specialist chain.
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