In the autumn of 2025, the competitive landscape in the public blockchain space is undergoing a dramatic shift, with a fierce battle for users, funding, and ecosystem momentum intensifying. Solana, once the king, faces another wave of declining traffic, while BNB Chain, leveraging its robust new ecosystem and technological upgrades, is generating a significant user acquisition siphon effect. Meanwhile, the Ethereum mainnet continues its steady growth amidst the hype, while the Layer 2 market presents a complex landscape of both extremes.
BNB Chain announced on the X platform that validators are proposing to reduce the minimum gas price on the BNB Smart Chain from 0.1 Gwei to 0.05 Gwei, while also accelerating the block interval from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds to maintain competitiveness with the fastest blockchains in the cryptocurrency space. Once this upgrade is complete, BSC will be nearly on par with Solana in terms of performance. Clearly, this BSC chain's attack on Solana is more than just a meme-fueled attack like the previous Four.me launch.
Ethereum: Steady Growth Amidst the Hustle and Bustle
While the Ethereum mainnet's on-chain activity isn't currently noticeable, it's seeing significant growth in terms of data. For example, daily transaction counts, for the entirety of 2024, will remain around 1 million. After April 2025, this number will begin to climb significantly, currently hovering between 1.5 million and 1.8 million, a record high for Ethereum.
A similar trend has also emerged in terms of daily active users. In August, Ethereum's daily active users peaked at 557,200, a nearly three-year high. Furthermore, this surge was no longer a flash in the pan, but rather sustained over time. As of September 22nd, daily active users remained above 500,000.
Of course, as a public chain primarily focused on DeFi and infrastructure, the Ethereum mainnet's rising popularity doesn't appear to be driven by new projects. For example, data from September 25th showed 198 newly created transaction pools on the Ethereum mainnet, generating approximately $11.5 million in trading volume, representing only 0.3% of the total $3.88 billion in on-chain trading volume that day.
Another major change in Ethereum's value is its TVL. Starting in April 2025, Ethereum's TVL soared from $45 billion to $97 billion. However, this increase is likely due to rising ETH prices. The amount of staked ETH has been declining since April. This suggests that the amount of ETH staked on the Ethereum chain is decreasing, which suggests a different source for the increased TVL. This increase may be due to the growth of stablecoins. As of September 25th, the market capitalization of Ethereum's stablecoins reached $161.7 billion, nearly doubling from $84 billion in December of the previous year.
Base: Transactions remain active, but user churn sounds the alarm
On-chain transactions on the Base Chain remain relatively active. The number of daily transactions has increased significantly, from approximately 8.4 million in August to 14.48 million on September 21st, reaching a new all-time high, surpassing the peak in January. Furthermore, the creation of new tokens is also active. Dexscreene, for example, created 3,586 new trading pools in the last 24 hours, a figure even higher than that of the BSC chain.
However, Base's daily active users have shown a significant decline since July, dropping from a peak of 2.4 million to 797,000 on September 22nd, a 67% drop. Furthermore, Base experienced a net outflow of $99.6 million in the past week, making it one of the public chains with the highest net outflow.
Overall, Base is still the most active public chain among Ethereum L2. Even though there has been a decline in daily active data, it still has advantages in various data.
Arbitrum: L2's leading position faces a test
Arbitrum maintains its leading position among Ethereum's L2 platforms in terms of TVL and stablecoins, but its daily transaction count is highly volatile. On September 22nd, Arbitrum's daily transaction count reached 4.28 million, compared to 1.92 million the day before. This significant fluctuation reflects Arbitrum's transaction volume over the past year, which has remained highly volatile overall.
Arbitrum ranked first among all public chains in terms of capital inflows, with a net inflow of $217 million over the past week. USDT0 and Hyperliquid still accounted for the lion's share of inflows, demonstrating Arbitrum's continued importance as a funding bridge for Hyperliquid. However, with the launch of Hyperliquid's own stablecoin, USDH, this tailwind may soon fade.
Hyperliquid: Facing intense competition from emerging rivals
From a public blockchain perspective, Hyperliquid's data isn't impressive. While its daily active users have seen significant growth, they still only reach 65,200. Transaction counts are only around 3 million per week. However, its TVL has seen significant growth this year, rising from $1.9 billion in April to $6.1 billion.
From a DEX perspective, Hyperliquid has recently come under significant competitive pressure from Aster. Since August, trading volume has shown a clear downward trend, falling from a range of $10 billion to $20 billion to a range of $5 billion to $10 billion.
Sui: Growth has reached a bottleneck, and emerging public chains have entered a period of silence?
Sui's development seems to have reached a bottleneck in 2025. The number of transactions has remained around 10 million since 2025, with no significant increase.
While the number of active addresses is significantly higher than before March 2024, it has fluctuated between 500,000 and 1 million daily active users over the past year, showing no clear upward or downward trend. Sui's TVL, on the other hand, has experienced a significant decline, falling from $1.24 billion in July to $575 million. Only 40 new transaction pools were created on-chain in a 24-hour period, far lower than during MEME's previous active phase. It seems that Sui, once a highly anticipated emerging public chain, is entering a period of inactivity.
Avalanche: On-chain activity surges, RWA may become a future focus
After years of relative inactivity, Avalanche has recently experienced a surge. The most obvious indicator is the number of active addresses. Since September, the number of daily active addresses on Avalanche L1s has surged from over 100,000 to millions, even reaching a record high of 29 million on September 22nd. The number of transactions has also surged, reaching nearly 50 million.
However, this surge appears to be unrelated to the activity of Avalanche (C-Chain). Looking at C-Chain data alone, the number of active addresses remains around 200,000. While this has increased, the gap with the overall number is significant. PANews speculates that this unusual increase may be related to stress testing of one of Avalanche's subnetworks. In August, Grove Finance planned to deploy approximately $250 million in RWAs on the Avalanche blockchain through Centrifuge and Janus Henderson.
On September 23rd, AgriFORCE announced its rebranding to AVAX One, aiming to raise $550 million and become the first Nasdaq-listed company to focus solely on acquiring Avalanche (AVAX) tokens. From an ecosystem perspective, Avalanche is currently leaning towards developing RWAs and stablecoins.
World Chain: The "truth" behind the huge capital inflow, team token migration
World Chain is mentioned here because it ranked second in the on-chain net inflow rankings over the past week, with a net inflow of $119 million. However, this inflow of funds may not be driven by users, but rather a strategic internal token migration by the Worldcoin team. On September 22, the Worldcoin team wallet transferred 110 million WLD from the Ethereum mainnet, of which 85 million (US$111 million) were transferred across chains to World Chain.
Recent data clearly demonstrates that competition in the public blockchain space has entered a new phase. Leveraging the wealth created by its phenomenal applications and robust ecosystem, BSC has successfully captured significant traffic and funding from Solana, staging a classic comeback. Ethereum, relying on its robust network consensus and foundation, has demonstrated its stabilizing power as a "ballast stone" in stablecoins and infrastructure.
At the same time, internal competition within Layer 2 and the growth struggles of emerging public chains demonstrate that this is a market driven by both technological iteration and narrative building. No public chain's leadership is permanent. Only by continuously innovating, building a thriving developer ecosystem, and capturing the next market hotspot can a company remain invincible in this endless battle for traffic. The future landscape remains uncertain.
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