Overview of Layer-1 public chains to watch in 2025: Who is To da moon?

Recently, the Layer-1 ecosystem has heated up again. Let's discuss the 15 mainchains worth following this year.

Rise King Ranking

Sei is really outrageous——it increased by 6000% in 2023. Although the hype has calmed down a bit now, this chain focused on DeFi indeed has some real capabilities. The native matching engine significantly reduces trading delays, which other chains cannot learn.

Kaspa is also not bad—a 257% increase, mainly due to the GHOSTDAG consensus mechanism and the technological upgrade from GoLang to Rust. The processing speed is indeed fast, having increased over 1800% in 2023.

Performance of the Traditional Big Brother:

• Solana: 464% increase, $61B market cap, has surpassed XRP to become the fifth largest coin.
• Bitcoin: 108% increase, $1.2T market cap, invincible
• Ethereum: 47% increase, $49B TVL, still the strongest in the ecosystem.

Who's Attracting the Most Capital in TVL

1. Ethereum — $49B (far ahead, unshakeable)
2. BNB Chain — $5.2B (The advantages of the Binance ecosystem still exist)
3. Solana — $3.46B (high ecological activity)
4. Avalanche — $1.5B (but recently due to the surge in inscriptions, the fees skyrocketed)
5. Cosmos — $1.25B (Cross-chain protocol has great potential)

Are there any highlights for the newcomers?

TON (The Open Network) — $21.9B market cap, 169% increase

• The background is a project by the founder of Telegram.
• In March this year, Telegram announced that it would distribute 50% of its advertising revenue to channel owners, paid via TON, resulting in a 40% increase in Toncoin.
• If Telegram IPOs or further integrates blockchain features, the actual application scenarios for this coin will explode.
• This operation has some substance.

ZetaChain — 133% increase, focusing on “omnichain” (true cross-chain)

• Launched only this year (March), but already has 6.3M cross-chain transactions and 1 million test users from over 100 countries.
• Can connect any chain, regardless of architecture, which indeed addresses the issue of multi-chain fragmentation.

Internet Computer — 112% increase

• Use DFINITY's technology for serverless cloud computing
• Integrated Websockets (real-time interaction), direct Bitcoin connection, HTTPS calls, etc.
• The ecological growth is organic, with NFT and social media projects on the rise.

Technology in this area

Firedancer Upgrade of Solana — It is said to significantly enhance validator speed, which is key to performance breakthroughs.

Aptos and Sui both use the Move language —— Although their TVL is not comparable to the big players (at $342M and $557M respectively), the development experience is indeed safer than Solidity.

Polkadot 2.0 —— Promises improvements in cross-chain, governance, and scalability, with Staking increased by 49% (through new Nomination Pools), indicating that user confidence is still present.

Common Features of These Chains

All are solving the same problem: the security, decentralization, and efficiency triangle dilemma

• Layer-1 is the foundation, ensuring security and finality.
• Layer-2 is responsible for scaling, but still relies on Layer-1 for settlement.
• The two layers have a symbiotic relationship, not a competition.

Risk Warning

Don't get too excited about the bull market rankings—Sui and Aptos have dropped by 73% and 27% respectively, indicating high volatility in new chains. Although TON has the background of Telegram, its future is also uncertain. Be sure to assess your risk tolerance before investing.