A Review of the Public Chain Market in 2024: Half Ice and Half Fire

2024 is destined to be a year of great significance in the development of cryptocurrency. From the official approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs to the US President-elect Trump's plan to use Bitcoin as a national strategic reserve, cryptocurrency has gradually become an emerging asset type recognized internationally. Bitcoin has broken through the $100,000 mark, MEME coins on Solana have emerged in an endless stream, and various original star projects have lost their luster, and the cryptocurrency market is in a state of ice and fire. Behind these changes, the public chain has always been the core battlefield of the crypto market, and all these competitions are also reflected in the competition of the public chain.

So from the perspective of data, which public chains have truly risen in 2024? Which public chains may not be underestimated, but actually decline? PANews conducted a review and summary on this.

Data description: This inventory targets Layer 1 and Layer 2, which are relatively popular, and focuses on TVL, token price, market value, number of active addresses, number of transactions, etc. throughout the year, from January 1, 2024 to December 29, 2024. Some public chains launched on the mainnet in mid-2024 use the initial data and year-end data when these public chain tokens are launched. TVL data uses Deflama, daily activity and daily transaction volume data come from Tokenterminal and the official browser, and price data comes from Coingecko.

The public chains reviewed this time include:

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 increased by an average of 7 times, with Hyperliquid and TON seeing the highest growth

In terms of TVL data, overall, the overall TVL data of the public chains analyzed has increased by 117.7% this year. Among them, the TVL of Layer 1 in 2024 increased by an average of 707.69%, and the TVL of Layer 2 projects increased by an average of 8515.22%. However, this is mainly because the TVL of L2 public chain Taiko was low when it was first launched, resulting in an increase of 825 times. Excluding Taiko, the average growth of other Layer 2 this year is 294.69%.

Among Layer 1, the ones with the highest TVL growth are Hyperliquid, TON, and Aptos, all of which have increased by more than 10 times. Among them, Hyperliquid's TVL has increased by 4407% since its launch. Among Layer 2, Taiko and Base are both the kings of growth this year. Taiko's TVL has increased by 82,500% from its launch to the end of the year, while Base's TVL has increased by about 721.51% throughout the year.

In addition to the growth, some public chains’ data not only failed to grow significantly after one year, but also experienced a certain decline. Among them, zkSync’s decline was the most serious, with TVL falling by 41.25% during the year, followed by Optimism (-16.69%), Fantom (-13.95%), Tron (-9.17%), and Polygon (-1.67%).

The daily activity of half of the public chains has declined, with Solana having the highest daily activity

In terms of network activity, the number of daily active addresses of Hyperliquid, Sui, and TON increased the most in 2024, with increases of 13381.48%, 3350.55%, and 2409.43%, respectively. In addition to these three public chains, the daily active data of several public chains such as Base, Aptos, and Solana also increased by more than 10 times during the year.

Surprisingly, among the 22 public chains analyzed, the daily active users of 9 public chains have declined to varying degrees this year. Among them, the daily active users of zkSync and StarkNet chains declined the most in 2024, exceeding 90%. In addition, the daily active users of Near, Blast, Polygon, Avalanche, Cardano, Optimism, and Tron have all declined to varying degrees 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