Author: Lim Yu Qian, CoinGecko; Translated by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
What is the most popular blockchain ecosystem?
The Solana ecosystem has maintained its lead as the most popular blockchain ecosystem this year, accounting for 38.8% of global cryptocurrency investors' interest in specific chain narratives. The Solana ecosystem started strong this year, with Solana bouncing back to 2021 levels, and key ecosystem project tokens and native meme coins also performing well. Subsequently, as meme coin speculation revived, the popularity of the Solana ecosystem continued to enhance, with traders preferring the chain's speed and low gas fees, and the viral spread of meme coin generator Pump.fun further propelled this.
Despite no change in Solana ecosystem's top ranking compared to when the research was first conducted in the first quarter, its share of investor interest has decreased by 10.5 percentage points as other ecosystems ramped up efforts to attract more attention.
Note: Arrows indicate changes in rankings compared to the first quarter of 2024 when the research was first conducted. Source: coingecko.com/research
The next most popular blockchain ecosystem is the Base ecosystem of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, with an investor interest of 16.8% as of 2024. Since the first quarter, the share of investor interest in the Base ecosystem has increased more than fivefold, elevating its ranking among Layer 2 ecosystems from seventh to second, surpassing the Layer 1 Ethereum ecosystem. This also means that the interest attracted by the Base ecosystem is now nine times that of the second most popular Layer 2 ecosystem, Arbitrum. Similar to the Solana ecosystem, the narrative of the Base ecosystem benefits from the chain becoming another favored market for meme coin trading.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum ecosystem has dropped one position 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 has decreased by 1.9 percentage points. This may be because Ethereum has become a mature ecosystem that investors are familiar with, and is no longer seen as a new, trending cryptocurrency narrative. At the same time, interest in 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 specific blockchains. The remaining 3.0% of interest is distributed among another 47 blockchain ecosystems.
TON & Sui surpass more mature blockchain ecosystems
Other blockchain ecosystems that are becoming increasingly popular in 2024 are TON and Sui, ranking just behind the Ethereum ecosystem. The TON ecosystem currently accounts for 6.2% of global investor interest, having grown by 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%.
Therefore, the emerging TON and Sui ecosystems have surpassed the BNB Smart Chain, Cosmos, and Avalanche ecosystems in both ranking and market share. Compared to the first quarter's popularity, the market share of all three established blockchain ecosystems has declined: the BNB Smart Chain ecosystem's market share fell by 1.3 percentage points to 4.1%, the Cosmos ecosystem's market share fell by 2.0 percentage points to 2.5%, and the Avalanche ecosystem's market share fell by 1.8 percentage points to 2.1%.
Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast ecosystems rise to prominence
Since the first quarter, investor interest in Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast ecosystems has increased, propelling them to top rankings for native meme coins that reinforce Bitcoin and support the RUNE standard. Similarly, the market share of the Tron ecosystem has grown from 0.02% to 1.02%, and the market share of the Blast ecosystem has grown from 0.30% to 0.75%.
These three blockchain ecosystems have replaced Injective, PulseChain, and Hedera ecosystems, with their share of investor interest declining by 0.21 to 0.34 percentage points.
Top 20 Most Popular Blockchain Ecosystems
Among 67 blockchain ecosystems, as of 2024, the 20 most popular blockchain ecosystems ranked by share of investor interest are as follows:
