2024 is destined to be a year of great significance in the development history of cryptocurrency. From the formal approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs to Trump's proposed plan to make Bitcoin a national strategic reserve, cryptocurrency is gradually becoming an internationally recognized emerging asset class. Bitcoin has surpassed the $100,000 mark, MEME coins on Solana are emerging one after another, and various original star projects are fading into insignificance, with the crypto market experiencing extremes. Behind all these changes, public blockchains remain the core battleground of the crypto market, and all this competition is reflected in the competition among public blockchains.
So from a data perspective, which public blockchains have truly risen in 2024? Which public blockchains' decline may not be underestimated, but rather a real decline? PANews conducted a review and summary of this.
Data Explanation: The targets of this inventory are the popular Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains, focusing on dimensions such as annual TVL, token prices, market capitalization, active addresses, and transaction volumes from January 1, 2024, to December 29, 2024. Some public blockchains that launched their mainnet in 2024 use the initial data and year-end data of these blockchain tokens. TVL data is sourced from DefiLlama, daily active and transaction volume data come from Tokenterminal and official browsers, and price data is sourced from Coingecko.
The public blockchains reviewed this time include:
Layer 1: Solana, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Sui, Aptos, TON, Avalanche, Cardano, Hyperliquid, Fantom (Sonic), Tron, Near
Layer 2: Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Polygon, Blast, Scroll, StarkNet, Taiko, Linea
Layer 1 TVL has an average growth of 7 times, with Hyperliquid and $TON having the highest increases.
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In terms of TVL data, overall, the TVL data of the analyzed public blockchains grew by 117.7% within the year. Among them, Layer 1 public blockchains had an average TVL growth of 707.69% in 2024, while Layer 2 projects had an average growth of 8,515.22%. However, this is mainly due to the very low initial TVL of the newly launched Layer 2 blockchain, Taiko, leading to a growth multiple of 825 times; excluding Taiko, the average growth of other Layer 2s this year was 294.69%.
Among Layer 1 blockchains, the highest TVL growth has been Hyperliquid, TON, and Aptos, all growing over 10 times, with Hyperliquid's TVL growing by 4,407% since its launch. Among Layer 2s, Taiko and Base have been the kings of growth this year, with Taiko's TVL growing by 82,500% from its launch to the end of the year, while Base's TVL has grown by about 721.51% throughout the year.
In addition to growth, there are also some public blockchains that, after a year, not only did not grow significantly but also experienced a certain degree of decline. Among them, zkSync has seen the most severe decline, with TVL decreasing by 41.25% within the year, followed by Optimism (-16.69%), Fantom (-13.95%), Tron (-9.17%), and Polygon (-1.67%).
Half of the public blockchains saw a decline in daily active users, with Solana having the highest daily activity.
In terms of network activity, Hyperliquid, Sui, and TON had the highest increases in daily active addresses in 2024, with increases of 13,381.48%, 3,350.55%, and 2,409.43% respectively. Besides these three public blockchains, the daily active data of several others like Base, Aptos, and Solana also increased over 10 times during the year.
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Surprisingly, among the 22 public blockchains analyzed, 9 saw varying degrees of decline in daily active user data this year. Among them, zkSync and StarkNet experienced the most severe decline, with daily active users dropping by over 90% in 2024. Additionally, Near, Blast, Polygon, Avalanche, Cardano, Optimism, and Tron have all seen varying degrees of decline compared to the beginning of the year.
At the beginning of the year, Tron had 2.2 million daily active addresses, ranking first among all public blockchains. After a year of changes, Solana has achieved 4 million daily active users, becoming the public blockchain with the highest number of daily active addresses, and in the statistics of the highest daily active data, Solana also has the highest number of 8.8 million.
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In terms of daily transaction volume, Hyperliquid has once again become the public blockchain with the largest growth, with a transaction volume growth of about 248,900% this year. Taiko grew by 4,471.43%, and Base's transaction volume increased by 1,948.78%, all of which are public blockchains that have grown more than 10 times. The Avalanche (C-Chain) network has seen the most severe decline in transaction volume, dropping from 2.8 million at the beginning of the year to 260,000, a decline of 90.71%. However, the main reason for this decline is that January 1, 2024, coincided with a peak period of abnormal fluctuations in Avalanche's transaction volume. Excluding this abnormal fluctuation, Avalanche's daily average transaction volume has generally remained at several hundred thousand transactions per day, with no significant fluctuations.
In addition, zkSync's decline has also reached 90%. In contrast, zkSync's decline is indeed quite evident, as the number of on-chain transactions has rapidly dropped from the original millions to only several hundred thousand per day since the end of the airdrop.
Token performance is mixed, with $HYPE taking the lead.
Some are happy while others are sad; in terms of token performance, half of the tokens increased while the other half decreased throughout the year. Hyperliquid's token performance was the most outstanding, with an annual increase of about 1,272.30%, and the maximum increase reaching 1,648.00%. It became the only public blockchain token to exceed a 10-fold increase. However, it should be noted that Hyperliquid's token HYPE was only issued at the end of November, so compared to other public blockchains, it indeed has a certain advantage in terms of price increase based on opening price calculations. However, there were also some other public blockchain tokens issued this year, many of which did not see significant increases, and some even decreased.
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In addition, other public blockchains with better token performance include Sui, TON, Tron, and BNB Chain, all of which have seen token prices increase by more than 100%. Solana's market popularity is very high this year, but in fact, compared to January 1, 2024, its token $SOL has only increased by 92.26%.
Compared to the beginning of the year, the token prices of 10 public blockchains have declined to varying degrees. Excluding the two tokens yet to be issued, Base and Linea, this proportion is exactly 50%. Among these declining tokens, StarkNet and Blast have seen the largest declines, reaching 75% and 65%, respectively.
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In terms of market capitalization, Ethereum still occupies the position of the elder brother among public blockchains, with a market capitalization of about $274.2 billion at the beginning of the year, which reached $409.4 billion at the end of the year, marking an increase of about 49.28% throughout the year. $BNB's market capitalization has consistently ranked second, with a slight increase over $SOL.
Ethereum remains the calmest, while Solana is fully engaged.
In addition to horizontal comparisons, the development of the following public blockchains may need to be described separately; in one sentence, it is half fireworks and half clarity.
Solana is a public blockchain that must be mentioned in 2024. This year, Solana's data changes are indeed remarkable, completely stepping out of the shadow of the FTX collapse, achieving significant breakthroughs not only in size but also showing momentum to compete with Ethereum. Over the past year, Solana has led the meme trend, becoming the public blockchain with the most users by leveraging the popularity of memes.
At the beginning of the year, Solana's TVL ranked fourth, rising to second by the end of the year. The number of daily active users ranked only eighth at the beginning of the year, while it became the public blockchain with the highest daily activity by the end of the year.
Ethereum, as the elder brother of public blockchains, seems to have remained calm in the bustling year of 2024. Many data points show little difference between the end and the beginning of the year, with daily active users growing by 9% over the year, and daily transaction volumes remaining almost flat. Only the TVL has grown by 127%. If we exclude the 49% growth of Ether's price itself, it seems that this data has not changed much in reality, and the stagnation of TVL in currency terms is also a reason for the token price's lackluster performance.
The main reason for this change may stem from the diversion brought by Layer 2. For Ethereum, whether it can maintain this stable state in the new year or experience more fluctuations may require more innovative content to lead.
Sui and Hyperliquid, a competition between tomorrow's star and supernova?
Hyperliquid is undoubtedly the supernova of the public blockchain track this year, surprising the market and ranking first in almost all data growth rates, such as daily active growth, transaction volume growth, TVL growth (ranked second), and token price growth. However, Hyperliquid's rapid rise also has some objective factors to consider; one is that it has the shortest time since inception, making it one of the youngest among the analyzed public blockchains. Secondly, while the growth rate is high, in terms of overall volume, it still lags far behind public blockchains like Ethereum or Solana. Especially in terms of active user numbers, Hyperliquid currently has only 286,500 total users, which is less than Solana's daily active numbers at the beginning of the year. Other data, such as TVL, is about $1.7 billion, which is one-fifth of Solana's.
However, Hyperliquid is already close to Solana in terms of daily transaction volume, ranking second. In terms of market capitalization, it lags behind several public blockchains that performed far worse than it this year. From this perspective, Hyperliquid's potential for development in 2025 remains enormous, but this development may require stronger and sustained data support.
Sui is regarded as the main competitor to Solana in the future. From the performance of the data, Sui's network has also performed brightly this year. The TVL has grown nearly 7 times this year, daily active users have increased by 33.5 times, and the number of transactions has exceeded 300 million in a single day. The token price has also seen the largest increase among public blockchains, except for Hyperliquid, with an increase of about 441.13% this year, and the maximum increase has exceeded 520.25%. In terms of growth levels, Sui's growth rate in 2024 has already surpassed Solana in some areas; however, another issue it faces now is the competition from projects like Hyperliquid or Aptos. In 2025, whether the Sui ecosystem can explode may require finding some new points of explosion.
In addition to the representative public blockchains mentioned above, in fact, other public blockchains in 2024 are also unwilling to rest on their laurels. Some are transforming towards AI, with Near being a representative example, while others, like Fantom, are upgrading their brand by launching new public blockchains as Sonic. Additionally, in the Layer 2 track, 2024 is also one of the hottest narratives for public blockchains. This year, several star Layer 2s have generally performed poorly on-chain after distributing airdrops. The best performer has been Base, which currently has no token plans among Layer 2s. Moreover, Taiko is also a Layer 2 that has not been very popular in the market but has performed well on-chain; however, its overall data volume is still not large, and its future development remains to be observed.
Finally, by comparing the relationships between the various data of these 22 public blockchains, it can be seen that the tokens with the largest increases in 2024 are mostly the public blockchains with the best growth in active users. From this perspective, perhaps the most important indicator for the development of public blockchains is still the users. For investors, how to judge the future expectations of a project may be hidden behind these simple data.
This article is republished with permission from: (PANews)
Original author: Frank, PANews
'2024 Public Blockchain Report Card: 5 Charts to Summarize Key Data, Who is the King of Public Blockchains?' was first published in 'Crypto City'.
