Leveraging expertise accumulated in Silicon Valley, NAVI has taken the lead in the Sui DeFi race.
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Leveraging expertise accumulated in Silicon Valley, NAVI has taken the lead in the Sui DeFi race.
Sui's enterprise-grade approach to foundational technology enables NAVI to build its bank-grade lending protocol on the network.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsTraditional banks have long adopted technological features such as online banking and chip cards. However, when Charles and Elliscope created the NAVI Protocol, they chose a different approach—leveraging their technical expertise and background to embrace the banking industry.
🌟NAVI Protocol: https://naviprotocol.io
We believe NAVI can become a Web3 bank for Web2 users, with kindness and enlightenment at the core of our company culture.
—Elliscope, Co-Founder of NAVI
The founders named the team NAVI, meaning "to treat each other kindly," reflecting their guiding philosophy.
While working at companies like Apple and LinkedIn, NAVI's founders were immersed in Silicon Valley innovation, collaborating with top engineers from around the world to develop technologies used by millions globally. When evaluating Sui as a potential platform for NAVI, they recognized how Sui was engineered with innovative scalability as its goal.
Sui’s founders share similar credentials, having built enterprise-grade networks from the ground up. Features such as Sui’s object-oriented programming model go far beyond the account-based models of other blockchains, offering experienced developers expressive capabilities akin to those found in infrastructure at leading tech firms in Silicon Valley.
Building for Users
At its core, NAVI implements lending functionality on Sui. The protocol allows users to deposit tokens, which then grow at a certain interest rate. On the other side, users can borrow tokens by paying interest. Borrowers typically use these tokens in ways that generate returns exceeding the interest cost. NAVI maintains balanced lending and collateral pools, maximizing capital efficiency.
We drew inspiration for NAVI’s design from traditional financial institutions that operate lending and deposit businesses—an approach historically proven highly effective. By combining this model with the flexibility and innovation of blockchain technology, we’ve created a protocol that is both user-friendly and efficient.
—M, Head of Business at NAVI
By any measure, NAVI’s growth has been substantial, demonstrating its strong performance in serving DeFi users borrowing and lending cryptocurrency on Sui.
NAVI has performed impressively, consistently ranking near the top of the DeFiLlama Sui page. Recently, it reached $150 million in TVL and lent out $60 million in assets.
🌟 Sui List on DeFiLlama: https://defillama.com/chain/Sui
Screenshot of the NAVI interface
Beyond the efficiency of its protocol, part of NAVI’s success stems from its user interface. The homepage displays each user’s available deposit and borrowing amounts, along with a health metric. Through Notifi, users receive updates via their preferred communication channel if their health metric indicates they need to adjust their account. The page also shows a list of tokens—including SUI, USDC, and WETH—with their respective yields and a simple “Supply” button enabling one-click deposits.
In less than a year, NAVI has grown to nearly 800,000 users.
Additional tabs in the interface allow users to view markets segmented by token supply, access bridging and swapping functions, and check leaderboards featuring top users. These gamified elements include classifications based on NAVI points, total supplied, total borrowed, and overall activity.
“We collaborate with well-known brands in the Web3 space across various campaigns, including OKX, Bitget Wallet, Zealy, and Galxe,” said Ivan, NAVI’s Marketing Lead. As an example of these partnerships, the leaderboard includes a category highlighting users who complete tasks on the Zealy platform.
Leveraging Object Security
DeFi protocols must practice and demonstrate exceptional security to protect users and maintain reputation. One factor that attracted NAVI’s founders to Sui is its object-oriented data architecture, making it more resistant to attacks compared to account-based blockchains.
All assets and tokens are represented as objects, avoiding common attack patterns seen on EVM chains, such as reentrancy or double-spending attacks.
—Charles, Co-Founder of NAVI
This design paradigm enables stronger control over how objects interact with and are accessed by one another, effectively mitigating a wide range of attack vectors. The granularity of control extends to specifying who can interact with an object, under what conditions, and through which methods. Unlike traditional account-based systems that rely on more generalized security measures, Sui’s object-centric approach allows developers to tailor security policies directly to the individual characteristics of each digital asset.
—Haoran, Core Smart Contract Developer at NAVI
NAVI’s focus on user experience includes ensuring that DeFi activities initiated by users are completed quickly and successfully. Users of Web2 financial applications expect operations they initiate to be finalized almost instantly. When opening accounts on NAVI, these users must find a similarly seamless experience.
Sui supports this experience through a transaction consensus mechanism that processes transactions faster than other blockchains. When someone conducts a DeFi transaction on NAVI, their transaction finalizes in under a second, with settlement completed within seconds. Moreover, due to Sui’s scalability, transaction times do not increase with volume, allowing NAVI to support surges in activity.
Looking Ahead
DeepBook, Sui’s first native liquidity layer, will play a role in NAVI’s future plans. By integrating with DeepBook for liquidations, NAVI ensures resilience against market fluctuations. The liquidity support provided by DeepBook enables NAVI to explore new offerings for users, including swaps and flash loans.
With their experience from leading technology companies, combined with passion for Web3 and decentralization, NAVI’s founders are well-positioned to fully leverage Sui’s architecture and capabilities. The NAVI Protocol has already achieved notable success—and they’re clearly on the right path forward.
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