Review of Mainstream Public Chain Performance in 2024: Data Divergence is Obvious, Hyperliquid Leads on Multiple Indicators

The year 2024 is destined to be a key year in the development history of cryptocurrency. The approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs has led to cryptocurrencies gradually becoming an internationally recognized emerging asset class. Bitcoin has broken through the $100,000 mark, and the MEME coin craze has emerged on Solana, with the market experiencing a stark contrast between extremes. Public chains remain the core competitive field in the crypto market, and the competition among various projects is also reflected at the public chain level.

So from a data perspective, which public chains will truly rise in 2024? Which public chains' decline is not underestimated, but actually occurring? This article provides a comprehensive review and summary of this.

Data description: The subjects of this inventory are Layer 1 and Layer 2 public chains with relatively high popularity, focusing on dimensions such as annual TVL, token price, market capitalization, number of active addresses, and number of transactions, with a time span from January 1, 2024, to December 29, 2024. Some public chains that go live on the mainnet in mid-2024 use the initial data at the time of token launch and year-end data. TVL data comes from Defillama, daily active and daily transaction volume data come from Tokenterminal and official browsers, and price data comes 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 averaged a 7-fold increase, with Hyperliquid and TON showing the highest growth.

Overall, the TVL data of the analyzed public chains has grown by 117.7% within the year. Among them, Layer 1 saw an average TVL growth of 707.69% in 2024, while Layer 2 projects experienced an average TVL growth of 8515.22%. However, the high growth of Layer 2 is mainly due to Taiko's relatively low TVL at launch, resulting in a growth multiple of 825 times. Excluding Taiko, the average growth of other Layer 2 projects this year is 294.69%.

The highest TVL growth in Layer 1 is seen in Hyperliquid, TON, and Aptos, with growth exceeding 10 times. Hyperliquid has experienced a TVL increase of 4407% since its launch. In Layer 2, Taiko and Base are the kings of growth this year, with Taiko's TVL increasing by 82500% from its launch to the end of the year, and Base's TVL growing approximately 721.51% over the year.

Some public chains have seen a decrease in data instead of an increase. Among them, zkSync has dropped the most severely, 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 public chains see a decline in daily active users, with Solana having the highest daily active users.

In terms of network activity, Hyperliquid, Sui, and TON saw the highest daily active address growth in 2024, at 13381.48%, 3350.55%, and 2409.43% respectively. Additionally, several public chains such as Base, Aptos, and Solana also saw their daily active data increase by more than ten times over the year.

Surprisingly, among the 22 public chains analyzed, 9 public chains have seen a decline in daily active users to varying degrees this year. Among them, zkSync and StarkNet experienced the most significant drop in daily active users in 2024, exceeding 90%. Additionally, the daily active levels of Near, Blast, Polygon, Avalanche, Cardano, Optimism, and Tron have all decreased to varying extents 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 chains. After a year of changes, Solana reached 4 million daily active addresses, becoming the public chain with the highest number of daily active addresses. In the highest daily activity statistics, Solana also peaked at 8.8 million, becoming the public chain with the most users.

In terms of daily transaction volume, Hyperliquid has once again become the public chain with the largest growth, with a year-on-year increase of approximately 248,900%. Taiko grew by 4,471.43%, and Base's transaction volume increased by 1,948.78%, all exceeding tenfold growth. The transaction volume of Avalanche(C-Chain) network has declined the most severely, dropping from 2.8 million transactions at the beginning of the year to 260,000 transactions, a decrease 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 basically maintained at hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, with little variation.

In addition, zkSync's decline has reached 90%. In contrast, zkSync's drop is indeed quite significant; since the end of the airdrop, the number of on-chain transactions has rapidly decreased from millions to just over a hundred thousand per day.

The price performance of cryptocurrencies is mixed, with HYPE taking the lead.

In terms of token performance, half of the tokens increased in value while the other half decreased throughout the year. The Hyperliquid token performed the best, with an annual increase of approximately 1272.30%, peaking at a maximum increase of 1648.00%. It became the only public chain token to exceed a tenfold increase. However, it should be noted that Hyperliquid's token HYPE was only issued at the end of November, which gives it a certain advantage in terms of increase compared to other public chains when calculated from the opening price. Additionally, there were some other public chain tokens issued during the year, many of which had only modest increases, and quite a few even saw declines.

In addition, other public chains with good token performance include Sui, TON, Tron, and BNB Chain, all of which have seen their token prices increase by more than 100%. Solana has had high market popularity 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 prices of 10 public chain tokens have declined to varying degrees. Excluding the 2 unreleased tokens, Base and Linea, this ratio is exactly 50%. Among the tokens that fell, StarkNet and Blast experienced the largest declines, reaching 75% and 65%, respectively.

In terms of market capitalization, Ethereum still holds the position of the leader among public chains, with a market cap of approximately $274.2 billion at the beginning of the year, which reached $409.4 billion by the end of the year, representing an annual growth of about 49.28%. BNB's market cap has consistently ranked second, with a growth slightly higher than SOL.

Ethereum is the most subdued, Solana is in full swing

Solana is a public chain that must be mentioned in 2024. This year, Solana's data changes are remarkable, completely stepping out of the shadow of the FTX collapse. It has not only made significant breakthroughs in scale but is even showing the momentum to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ethereum. Over the past year, Solana has led the MEME trend, becoming the public chain with the most users thanks to the popularity of MEME.

At the beginning of the year, Solana's TVL ranked fourth, and by the end of the year, it rose to second place. At the start of the year, the daily active users ranked only eighth, but by the end of the year, it became the public chain with the highest daily active users.

Ethereum, as the big brother of public chains, seems to remain calm in this bustling year of 2024. Many data points show little difference between the end and the beginning of the year, with daily active users increasing by 9% over the year and daily transaction counts remaining almost flat. Only the TVL amount has increased by 127%, and if we exclude the 49% increase in the price of ETH itself, it seems that this data does not reflect any significant real change. The stagnation of TVL in terms of coins is also a reason for the price performance not being outstanding.

The main reason for this change may be the diversion from Layer 2. For Ethereum, whether it maintains this stable state in the new year or experiences more fluctuations may require more innovative content to lead the way.

Sui vs Hyperliquid, the competition between the rising star and the supernova?

Hyperliquid is undoubtedly the supernova of the public chain track this year, surprising the market with a number of unexpected results, ranking first in almost all growth metrics, such as daily active user growth, transaction volume growth, and TVL growth (ranking second), as well as token price growth. However, amidst Hyperliquid's rapid rise, there are some objective factors to consider. Firstly, it has the shortest birth time, making it the youngest among the analyzed public chains. Secondly, although the growth rate is high, in terms of overall volume, it is still far behind public chains like Ethereum or Solana. Especially for metrics like active user count, Hyperliquid currently has only 286,500 total users, which is still less than Solana's daily active users at the beginning of the year. Other metrics, such as TVL, are about $1.7 billion, which is one-fifth of Solana's.

However, Hyperliquid is already close to Solana in terms of daily trading volume, ranking second. In terms of market capitalization, it lags behind several public chains that have performed far worse than it this year. From this perspective, the development potential of Hyperliquid in 2025 remains enormous, but this growth may require stronger and more sustained data support.

Sui is considered to be a major competitor to Solana in the future. From the data's performance, the Sui network has also shown impressive results this year. The TVL has increased nearly 7 times within the year, daily active users have grown 33.5 times, and the number of transactions peaked at over 300 million in a single day. The token price has also increased the most among public chains, except for Hyperliquid, with an increase of approximately 441.13% this year, and a maximum increase of over 520.25%. In terms of growth levels, Sui's growth rate in 2024 has already surpassed Solana in some areas, but it now faces another challenge from projects like Hyperliquid or Aptos catching up. In 2025, whether the Sui ecosystem can explode may require finding some new breakout points.

In addition to the few representative public chains mentioned above, other public chains are also not content to sit idly by in 2024. Some are transforming towards AI, such as Near, while others are upgrading their brands by issuing new public chains, like Fantom changing to Sonic. Furthermore, in the Layer 2 arena, 2024 is shaping up to be one of the hottest narratives for public chains. This year, several star Layer 2 projects have issued airdrops, but their overall on-chain performance has been poor. The best performer has been Base, a Layer 2 with no token plans to date. Additionally, Taiko is another Layer 2 that has not received much market attention, yet it has performed well on-chain. However, the overall data volume at present is not large, and future developments remain to be observed.

Finally, by comparing the relationships between the various data of these 22 public chains, it can be seen that the tokens with the highest increase in 2024 are also basically the ones with the best growth in active users. From this perspective, perhaps the most important indicator for the development of public chains is still the users. For investors, how to judge the future expectations of a project may also have its secrets hidden beneath these simple data.