Author: Lim Yu Qian, CoinGecko; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
What is the hottest blockchain ecosystem?
The Solana ecosystem has maintained its lead as the most popular blockchain ecosystem this year, accounting for 38.8% of global crypto investor interest in a specific chain narrative. The Solana ecosystem started the year strongly, with Solana rebounding to 2021 levels, and key ecosystem project tokens and native meme coins also performing well. Subsequently, the Solana ecosystem's popularity continued to strengthen with the resurgence of meme coin speculation, with traders preferring the chain's speed and low gas fees, and further boosted by the virality of the meme coin generator Pump.fun.
While the Solana ecosystem’s top ranking remained unchanged from the first quarter of the study, its share of investor interest fell by 10.5 percentage points as other ecosystems stepped up efforts to attract more attention.
Note: Arrows indicate change in rankings compared to when the study was first conducted in Q1 2024. Source: coingecko.com/research
The next most popular blockchain ecosystem is the Base ecosystem from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, with 16.8% investor interest as of 2024. The Base ecosystem has increased its share of investor interest by more than 5x since Q1, moving the Layer 2 ecosystem from seventh to second and surpassing the Layer 1 Ethereum ecosystem. This also means that the Base ecosystem now attracts 9x more interest than the second most popular Layer 2 ecosystem, Arbitrum. Similar to the Solana ecosystem, the Base ecosystem narrative has benefited from the chain becoming another favored market for memecoin trading.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum ecosystem dropped one spot to become the third most popular blockchain ecosystem, accounting for 10.8% of investor interest. Compared to the first quarter, the Ethereum ecosystem's attention dropped by 1.9 percentage points. This may be because Ethereum has become a well-established ecosystem and is familiar to investors, so it is no longer seen as a new, trending cryptocurrency narrative. At the same time, attention on the Ethereum ecosystem is increasingly dispersed to the Layer 2 ecosystems built on top of it.
Overall, the 20 most popular blockchain ecosystems represent 97.0% of investor interest in a specific blockchain. The remaining 3.0% of interest is spread across another 47 blockchain ecosystems.
TON & Sui outperform more mature blockchain ecosystems
Other blockchain ecosystems that are gaining popularity in 2024 are TON and Sui, which ranks second only to the Ethereum ecosystem. The TON ecosystem currently accounts for 6.2% of global investor interest, an increase of 4.3 percentage points since the first quarter, while the Sui ecosystem's share of investor interest has increased by 2.7 percentage points to 4.8%.
As a result, the up-and-coming TON and Sui ecosystems surpassed the BNB Smart Chain, Cosmos, and Avalanche ecosystems in both ranking and market share. All three established blockchain ecosystems saw a decline in market share compared to their popularity in the first quarter: the BNB Smart Chain ecosystem saw a decline in market share of 1.3 percentage points to 4.1%, while the Cosmos ecosystem saw a decline in market share of 2.0 percentage points to 2.5%, and the Avalanche ecosystem saw a decline in market share of 1.8 percentage points to 2.1%.
Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast Ecosystems at the Fore
Since the first quarter, the Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast ecosystems have seen an increase in investor interest, which has moved them to the top of the rankings for Bitcoin enhancements and native memecoins that support the Rune Standard. Similarly, the Tron ecosystem has grown its market share from 0.02% to 1.02%, and the Blast ecosystem has grown its market share from 0.30% to 0.75%.
These 3 blockchain ecosystems replaced the Injective, PulseChain, and Hedera ecosystems, with the investor interest share falling by 0.21 to 0.34 percentage points.
Top 20 most popular blockchain ecosystems
Among the 67 blockchain ecosystems, the 20 most popular ones ranked by share of investor interest by 2024 are as follows:
