How Bluefin achieved billions in trading volume by switching to Sui

Challenge

Bluefin's founders initially launched their protocol, named Bluefin Classic, on the Arbitrum network, with the goal of offering a fast, fluid, and performant exchange for perpetual derivative trading. Through 2023 they gauged the performance of Bluefin Classic, looking at metrics such as network speed and execution cost.

Although Bluefin Classic gave its founders important insights into customer behavior and the decentralized finance landscape, the network did not deliver the speed they expected. User transactions experienced lags as network activity increased. Traditional financial platforms are expected to deliver trades in 30 milliseconds, and Bluefin Classic could not reach that level of performance.

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Solution

As Bluefin's founders surveyed the Web3 landscape, they began tracking Sui's progress. In early 2023, Sui Mainnet had not yet launched, but the network showed innovative technology and promising metrics. With a unique consensus mechanism, the network could very quickly process one-to-one transactions, while preserving ample bandwidth for shared transactions. In addition, the scalable network architecture ensured that user transactions would not be delayed during high volume trading.

After Sui's Mainnet launch, the network proved its worth, handling over 5,000 transactions per second. Impressed by these real-world metrics, Bluefin began developing Bluefin v2 on Sui. Not only would this new version of the trading platform take advantage of Sui’s scalability and performance, the founders would integrate sponsored transactions and zkLogin, two Sui features and eliminate the user onboarding friction common on other blockchain networks.

Bluefin Classic began its deprecation process in late December, 2023, allowing time for users to liquidate positions, and closing the protocol on Arbitrum by January 20, 2024.

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Results

Bluefin v2 ramped up quickly after its launch on Sui in September, 2023, logging $3.2 billion trading volume in December alone. That volume eclipsed the $2.1 billion volume trading on Bluefin Classic over all of 2023. Bluefin's users experienced a new platform built on Sui capable of optimistically finalizing transactions in 30 milliseconds, with settlement happening in 550 milliseconds. Further driving usage on Bluefin v2, transaction fees come in below $0.005 consistently, with no spikes during high trading volume.

Eager to onboard new users, Bluefin enabled zkLogin on its site, a Sui feature letting people establish an account using their Google or Apple login credentials. This process eliminates the friction seen on other blockchains, which require users to install a wallet and save a mnemonic recovery phrase.