The market is no longer lacking blockchains; what’s missing is blockchains that people actually use.

L1, L2, modular, cross-chain, various infrastructure—these narratives have been told over and over again in recent years. But after cooling down, many projects have exposed their most embarrassing problems: the chain still exists, but users are gone; the bridges are still there, but no one crosses; the ecosystem remains, but the data has cooled off.
Many once-popular L2s have such low activity that people doubt whether they are still operational. 😂
Gate’s May transparency report features data from Gate Layer that the little sister of data analysts finds quite valuable: in May, on-chain transaction volume was 40 million transactions, a 10% increase month-over-month.
This number might not seem so extraordinary in a bull market, as airdrops, meme farming, meme coins, and emotional trading can pile up the data. Being able to reach 40 million on-chain transactions during such times is, I think, more convincing than simply talking about TPS, low gas fees, or modularity.
The most interesting part of Gate Layer is that it’s not built from scratch to create an empty ecosystem. Gate itself already has trading users, asset liquidity, spot, derivatives, Perp DEX, payments, and increasingly more financial product scenarios.
From the May performance report, we can see: Gate’s total trading volume was $391 billion, reserve funds amounted to $8.05 billion, 605 CFD trading assets went live, and projects like Gate AI, prediction markets, and Gate Card are also progressing.
Looking at these businesses together, the positioning of Gate Layer becomes clear: it’s more like the underlying connection layer that links Gate’s trading, on-chain assets, payments, AI, and TradFi products.
When evaluating infrastructure projects now, you can’t just listen to whose story sounds pretty. What’s truly valuable is who actually holds ongoing transactions, real users, and real-world applications.
The 40 million transactions of Gate Layer already reveal many issues. 👍