Solana (SOL) and SUI have drawn considerable attention in the cryptocurrency market, leading to discussions about their competition.

Despite both projects showing potential, Solana is currently surpassing SUI in performance. This indicates that the competition between them may not be as close as perceived by the market.

Solana has regained significant interest from institutional investors recently, pointing to a positive trend for the project often referred to as the "Ethereum killer." While April was slower for SOL, May saw a resurgence in institutional confidence.

During the week ending May 3, Solana received $6 million in inflows compared to SUI's $0.3 million. Moreover, SOL has outpaced SUI in year-to-date inflows, accumulating $80 million versus $72 million for SUI.

The influx of institutional funds into Solana underlines its position as a key player in the blockchain industry. Nevertheless, SUI's progress should not be disregarded. Alvin Kan, COO at Bitget Wallet, mentioned the growing interest in SUI, attributing it to its scalability, unique features like the Move programming language, and expanding use cases such as Bitcoin restaking via SatLayer.

In the realm of DeFi, SUI has shown significant growth, exceeding Solana's performance from April 12 to May 12 with a 76% increase in total value locked (TVL) reaching $2.0 billion. Meanwhile, Solana experienced a 40% increase, with its TVL reaching $9.38 billion. Despite this, Solana remains a dominant platform in DeFi, having facilitated $35 billion worth of transactions through decentralized exchanges (DEXs) since May's onset.

The established presence of Solana in the DeFi landscape gives it an advantage over SUI in terms of adoption and usage. Ben Nadraski, the Founder and CEO of Solstice Labs, highlighted Solana's strong position with its impressive daily transactions and active addresses.

The potential launch of Solana and SUI ETFs is a critical development. Shaun Lee, Research Analyst at CoinGecko, suggested that a SOL ETF might get approval before a SUI ETF due to various applications already under review. Also, Solana futures ETFs are available for trading in the US, indicating regulator comfort with SOL-based products.

Both SUI and Solana have experienced moderate growth recently, with SUI rising 26% while SOL increased by 22%. SUI is trading at $4.13 and aims to hold $4.05 as support after an upward trend. Solana, trading at $176, is close to ending its ongoing Death Cross pattern but needs to surpass the critical $180 resistance level to maintain bullish momentum.

Despite SUI's promising performance, Solana appears to have the upper hand with institutional backing and dominance in DeFi. This suggests that SUI is unlikely to outperform Solana in the near future.