Introducing the DeFi Moonshots Program: Expanding Onchain Finance

Main Takeaways

• The DeFi Moonshots Program engages closely with a small number of top teams building category-defining financial products on Sui, prioritizing innovation and credible market impact over incremental iteration.
• Teams developing novel financial primitives, capital efficiency breakthroughs, or products capable of attracting new capital or sustained user engagement are encouraged to apply, with roughly ten teams to be selected each year.
• Selected teams may receive up to $500k in growth incentives, direct collaboration with DeFi engineering specialists, audit credits, plus coordinated launch and milestone amplification as products scale.

Overview

Most DeFi innovation today is incremental. Faster execution, deeper liquidity, tighter spreads. Important progress, but rarely category-defining. The breakthroughs that reset markets are far less common. And they are what moves onchain finance forward.

Sui’s early ecosystem incentives helped bootstrap DeFi growth, seeding teams, activating liquidity, and accelerating a market that now supports real usage and scale. The DeFi Moonshots Program is the next phase: a more focused, higher-bar initiative built to identify and support the protocols that can define new application categories.

In short, Moonshots is an ultra-selective initiative focused on teams building financial products that do not yet exist in the market. Systems designed to unlock new forms of capital efficiency, attract net new liquidity, or redefine how users engage with onchain finance. 

The objective is transformation, not iteration.

The program seeks builders with credible paths to product market fit and breakout adoption, and partners closely with them as they push the frontier outward. If you are building something that could reshape a category, this is where the conversation begins.

Introducing Moonshots

The DeFi Moonshots Program is a high-conviction initiative focused on identifying and partnering with category-defining DeFi builders.

Moonshots is not structured as a cohort, season, or accelerator. 

There are no batches or fixed cycles. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and acceptance is extremely selective. Only a handful of teams will be selected each year. 

Current expectations are that roughly ten projects will be chosen annually, reflecting the depth of engagement required. Selection signals belief in a team’s technical depth, product direction, and capacity to shape its category.

Moonshots is for teams that have solved both the product and the business side. The strongest applicants don’t just build great tech; they know how it ships, scales, and becomes a real business. 

The focus is not short-term TVL expansion, but architectural innovation, credible pathways to product market fit, and the creation of new financial use cases. The program works directly with selected teams positioned to deliver on that ambition.

Incentives are intended to support teams in user acquisition and market access, allowing them to focus on strong execution and a successful product launch. 

What Selected Teams Receive

Participation is focused on the areas that most directly affect how a product gets built, launched, and adopted. The program centers on aligning capital, engineering, security, and market visibility with what it actually takes to build and launch financial systems. 

Interaction is practical and focused, with attention placed on moments where timing and execution matter most. See below for how that will take shape for the selected teams.

Incentives: Teams will receive up to $500,000 in cumulative incentives. 

Pre-launch teams will access an initial allocation of up to $350,000 of incentives, with additional incentives tied to measurable traction and onchain activity (totalling up to $500,000), plus fast-track review for additional incentives beyond the program.

Technical Collaboration: Selected teams will engage directly with DeFi engineering specialists on architecture, performance, and integration considerations. Collaboration is hands-on and centered on solving complex implementation challenges as systems scale.

Security Alignment: Audit credits are available through Sui’s ecosystem security partners, strengthening protocol robustness ahead of deployment and expansion.

Go-to-Market Alignment: Moonshots helps coordinate launch visibility and milestone amplification to ensure products reach relevant audiences at critical growth moments. The focus is on helping strong products gain recognition when and where it matters.

Who Moonshots Is Designed For

Moonshots is built for teams pursuing meaningful advances in onchain finance, not incremental extensions of existing models. 

The program targets both pre- and post-launch teams developing products positioned to become flagship offerings within their category. Selection prioritizes product ambition, execution capability, and credible paths to sustainable revenue.

Product Ambition

Evaluation focuses on products that expand the design space of DeFi, including:

• Novel financial primitives introducing mechanisms or interaction models not currently present onchain, supported by clear architectural reasoning
• Capital efficiency breakthroughs delivering material improvements in liquidity utilization, pricing dynamics, or portfolio optimization through genuine technical innovation
• Net new capital onboarding through credible theses that attract previously untapped user segments or asset flows
• High-value consumer products designed for sustained engagement and retention beyond short-term liquidity accumulation

Preference is given to architectures that encourage composability across the broader ecosystem and create foundational building blocks for future innovation.

Team Signals

Product ambition alone is insufficient. Assessment also considers whether a team demonstrates the capacity to deliver:

• Proven shipping velocity and a track record of real adoption
• Deep domain expertise in the financial systems being built
• Meaningful open-source contributions
• Evidence of market validation or fundraising credibility
• Experience building or contributing to successful protocols or ventures

How Selection Works

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis by the Moonshots committee, composed of representatives across DeFi product, engineering, and partnerships. 

Evaluation considers product originality, technical depth, credible revenue trajectory, composability impact within the broader ecosystem, and team execution capability. 

Shortlisted teams are invited to participate in structured discussions focused on architecture, roadmap, and market positioning.

All applicants are informed of the outcome of their submission. 

Selected teams enter an engagement phase that includes recurring working sessions with engineering specialists and program leadership. Post launch involves sharing onchain data to support evaluation of product progress and incentive distribution.

Apply to the DeFi Moonshots Program

Onchain finance still has vast unexplored design space.  The next generation of DeFi will come from teams willing to challenge assumptions and build what does not yet exist. 

Moonshots engages with builders operating at that level of ambition. Teams grounded in technical depth, commercial realism, and credible paths toward meaningful adoption. 

Applications are open on a rolling basis and reviewed continuously. 

Teams pursuing incremental improvements may find better alignment elsewhere. For those ready to reshape how markets operate onchain, this is the place to begin.

👉 Apply here

Have questions? Drop them in Discord.

Watch the dedicated Moonshots livestream on X on February 16 for more information.