Author: Frank, PANews
2024 is destined to be a year of great significance in the development of cryptocurrencies. From the official approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs to the plan proposed by US President-elect Trump to make Bitcoin a national strategic reserve, cryptocurrencies are gradually becoming a recognized new asset class in the international community. Bitcoin has broken through the $100,000 mark, and MEME tokens on Solana are emerging one after another, while many former star projects have faded into obscurity, with the cryptocurrency market experiencing both highs and lows. Behind these changes, public chains remain the core battlefield of the cryptocurrency market, and all these competitions are also reflected in the competition among public chains.
So from a data perspective, which public chains have truly risen in 2024? Which public chains' decline may not be due to underestimation, but rather a real decline? PANews has conducted a review and summary.
The data shows that the objects of this review are the more popular Layer 1 and Layer 2 projects, focusing on the full-year TVL, token prices, market capitalization, active addresses, and transaction volumes. The time period is from January 1, 2024 to December 29, 2024, and for public chains that launched their mainnet in 2024, the starting data and year-end data of their tokens are used. TVL data is from Defillama, daily active and transaction data is from Tokenterminal and official explorers, and price data is from Coingecko.
The public chains included in this review are:
Layer1: 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.
Layer1 TVL average growth 7-fold, Hyperliquid and TON have the highest growth
In terms of TVL data, overall, the TVL of the analyzed public chains grew by 117.7% during the year. Among them, the average TVL of Layer 1 grew by 707.69% in 2024, and the average TVL of Layer 2 projects grew by 8515.22%, though this is mainly due to the low initial TVL of the newly launched L2 chain Taiko, resulting in a 825-fold increase. Excluding Taiko, the average growth of other Layer 2 this year was 294.69%.
Among Layer 1, the highest TVL growth was Hyperliquid, TON, and Aptos, all with over 10-fold growth, with Hyperliquid's TVL growing 4407% since its launch. Among Layer 2, Taiko and Base were the growth champions this year, with Taiko's TVL growing 82500% from launch to the end of the year, and Base's TVL growing about 721.51% throughout the year.
In addition to the growth, some public chains also saw a certain degree of decline in their data a year later. Among them, the decline of zkSync was the most severe, with its TVL decreasing by 41.25% during the year, followed by Optimism (-16.69%), Fantom (-13.95%), Tron (-9.17%), and Polygon (-1.67%).
Half of the public chains saw a decline in daily active users, Solana had the highest daily active
In terms of network activity, Hyperliquid, Sui, and TON had the highest growth in daily active addresses in 2024, with increases of 13381.48%, 3350.55%, and 2409.43% respectively. In addition to these three public chains, Base, Aptos, Solana and a few other public chains also saw over 10-fold increases in daily active data during the year.
Surprisingly, among the 22 public chains analyzed, 9 of them saw varying degrees of decline in their daily active data this year. Among them, the daily active users of zkSync and StarkNet declined the most, by over 90%. In addition, Near, Blast, Polygon, Avalanche, Cardano, Optimism, and Tron all saw varying degrees of decline in their daily active levels compared to the beginning of the year.
At the beginning of the year, Tron had the highest daily active address count at 2.2 million, ranking first among all public chains. After a year of changes, Solana became the public chain with the highest daily active addresses at 4 million, and its highest daily active data reached 8.8 million, making it the public chain with the largest user base.
In terms of daily transaction volumes, Hyperliquid once again became the public chain with the largest growth, with its transaction volume increasing by about 248900% during the year. Taiko grew 4471.43%, and Base's transaction volume grew 1948.78%, all over 10-fold growth. The transaction volume of the Avalanche (C-Chain) network declined the most severely, from 2.8 million transactions at the beginning of the year to 260,000, a 90.71% decline. However, the main reason for this decline was that January 1, 2024 happened to be a peak period of abnormal transaction volume fluctuations on Avalanche, and excluding this abnormal fluctuation, Avalanche's daily average transaction volume has basically remained in the hundreds of thousands of transactions per day without much fluctuation.
In addition, the decline of zkSync also reached 90%, and this decline is indeed more obvious. After the airdrop ended, the on-chain transaction volume dropped rapidly from the previous millions to tens of thousands per day.
Token performance, half up and half down, HYPE takes the lead
Some are happy, some are sad. In terms of token performance, half of the tokens appreciated and half declined. Hyperliquid's token performance was the best, with an annual increase of about 1272.30%, and a maximum increase of 1648.00%, becoming the only public chain token to increase more than 10-fold. However, it should be noted that Hyperliquid's token HYPE was just issued in late November, so the opening price calculation does give it an advantage in terms of growth. However, there are also some other public chain tokens that were issued this year, and many of them did not see much growth, and some even declined.
Other public chains with good token performance include Sui, TON, Tron, and BNB Chain, with token prices increasing by more than 100%. Solana was very popular in the market this year, but in fact, its token SOL price only increased by 92.26% compared to January 1, 2024.
Compared to the beginning of the year, 10 public chain tokens saw varying degrees of decline. Excluding the 2 unissued tokens Base and Linea, this proportion is exactly 50%. Among the declining tokens, StarkNet and Blast saw the largest declines, of 75% and 65% respectively.
In terms of market capitalization, Ethereum still occupies the position of the public chain patriarch, with a market capitalization of about $274.2 billion at the beginning of the year and $409.4 billion at the end of the year, an increase of about 49.28% during the year. BNB's market capitalization has also remained in second place, with a slightly higher growth than SOL.
Ethereum the most calm, Solana in full force
In addition to the horizontal comparisons, the development of the following few public chains may need to be explained separately, and can be described in one sentence as half fireworks, half tranquility.
Solana is the public chain that cannot be ignored in 2024. In this year, Solana's data changes have been eye-catching, completely emerging from the shadow of the FTX collapse, and has even shown the momentum to rival Ethereum. In the past year, Solana has led the MEME craze and become the public chain with the largest user base thanks to the heat of MEME.
At the beginning of the year, Solana's TVL was only ranked fourth, but by the end of the year it had risen to second place. Its daily active users ranked eighth at the beginning of the year, but by the end of the year it had become the public chain with the highest daily active users.
As the patriarch of public chains, Ethereum's performance in this lively 2024 seems to be calm. Many of its data points differed little between the end and beginning of the year, with daily active users growing 9% during the year and daily transaction volumes almost flat. Only its TVL grew by 127%, but if the 49% increase in the ETH price itself is excluded, this data also does not seem to have much real change, and the stagnation of TVL in token terms is also the reason for its unimpressive price performance.
The main reason for this change may be the diversion to Layer2. For Ethereum, whether the new year will maintain this stable state or have more ups and downs, perhaps it needs more innovative content to lead the way.
Sui and Hyperliquid, the rising stars and supernovas of the competition?
Hyperliquid is undoubtedly the superstar of the public chain track this year, giving the market many surprises, ranking first in the growth rate of almost all data, such as daily active growth, transaction volume growth, TVL growth (ranking second), and token price growth. However, in the rapid rise of Hyperliquid, there are also some objective factors that need to be considered. First, it has the shortest time of birth, and is almost the youngest among the analyzed public chains. Second, although the growth rate is high, in terms of the overall scale, it is still far behind public chains such as Ethereum or Solana. Especially for data like active user numbers, Hyperliquid's total user base is currently only 286,500, which is not even as much as Solana's daily active users at the beginning of the year. In terms of other data such as TVL scale, it is about $1.7 billion, which is one-fifth of Solana.
However, Hyperliquid has already approached Solana in terms of daily transaction volume, ranking second. In terms of market capitalization, it is still behind a few public chains that have performed much worse than it this year. From this perspective, Hyperliquid's development potential in 2025 is still huge, but the support of stronger and more sustained data may be needed behind this development.
Sui is considered to be Solana's main competitor in the future. From the data performance, Sui network's performance this year has also been quite eye-catching. Its TVL has grown nearly 7 times within the year, its daily active users have grown 33.5 times, and its single-day transaction volume has exceeded 300 million. The price of its token has also increased the most among public chains except Hyperliquid, rising about 441.13% within the year, with a peak increase of over 520.25%. In terms of growth rate, Sui has already surpassed Solana in some areas by 2024, but it is now facing another problem of being caught up by projects like Hyperliquid or Aptos. Whether the Sui ecosystem can explode in 2025 may need to find some new growth points.
In addition to the few representative public chains mentioned above, in fact, other public chains are also not willing to be idle in 2024. Some are transforming towards AI, such as Near, and some are upgrading their brands by issuing new public chains, such as Fantom changing to Sonic. In addition, Layer 2 has also been one of the hottest public chain narratives in 2024. After several star Layer 2s distributed airdrops this year, their on-chain performance has generally been poor. The best performer is actually Base, a Layer 2 that has not had a token plan so far. In addition, Taiko is also a Layer 2 with low market heat but good on-chain performance, but its overall data volume is not large, and its future development remains to be observed.
Finally, by comparing the relationships between the various data of these 22 public chains, it can be seen that the public chains with the largest token price increases in 2024 are also basically the ones with the best growth in active users. From this perspective, perhaps the most important indicator for public chain development is still users. For investors, the secret to judging the future expectations of a project may also be hidden in these simple data.
