Coingecko: What will be the hottest blockchain ecosystem in 2024?

Author: Lim Yu Qian, CoinGecko; Translator: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

What is the hottest blockchain ecosystem?

The Solana ecosystem maintained its lead as the most popular blockchain ecosystem this year, accounting for 38.8% of global cryptocurrency investors' interest in specific chain narratives. The Solana ecosystem started the year strongly, with Solana rebounding to 2021 levels, and key ecosystem project tokens and native Meme coins also performing well. Subsequently, the Solana ecosystem's popularity continued to strengthen with the resurgence of Meme coin speculation, with traders preferring the chain's speed and low gas fees, and further boosted by the viral spread of the Meme coin generator Pump.fun.

While the Solana ecosystem’s top ranking remained unchanged from the first quarter of the study, its share of investor interest fell by 10.5 percentage points as other ecosystems stepped up to attract more attention.

Note: Arrows indicate changes in rankings from the first quarter of 2024, when the study was first conducted. Source: coingecko.com/research

The next most popular blockchain ecosystem is cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s Base ecosystem, with 16.8% investor interest through 2024.The Base ecosystem’s share of investor interest has increased more than 5x since Q1, boosting the Layer 2 ecosystem’s ranking from seventh to second and surpassing the Layer 1 Ethereum ecosystem. This also means that the Base ecosystem now attracts 9x more interest than the second most popular Layer 2 ecosystem, Arbitrum. Similar to the Solana ecosystem, the Base ecosystem’s narrative has benefited from the chain becoming another favored market for memecoin trading.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum ecosystem dropped one spot to become the third most popular blockchain ecosystem, accounting for 10.8% of investor interest.

Compared to the first quarter, the Ethereum ecosystem saw a 1.9 percentage point drop in interest. This is likely because Ethereum has become a well-established ecosystem and is familiar to investors, so it is no longer seen as a new, trending cryptocurrency narrative. At the same time, attention on the Ethereum ecosystem is increasingly dispersed to the layer 2 ecosystems built on top of it.

Overall, the 20 most popular blockchain ecosystems represent 97.0% of investor interest in a specific blockchain. The remaining 3.0% of interest is spread across another 47 blockchain ecosystems.

TON & Sui Outperform More Established Blockchain Ecosystems

Other blockchain ecosystems that are gaining popularity in 2024 are TON and Sui, ranking just behind the Ethereum ecosystem. The TON ecosystem now accounts for 6.2% of global investor interest, up 4.3 percentage points since Q1, while the Sui ecosystem’s share of investor interest grew 2.7 percentage points to 4.8%.

As a result, the up-and-coming TON and Sui ecosystems have surpassed the BNB Smart Chain, Cosmos, and Avalanche ecosystems in both ranking and market share. All 3 established blockchain ecosystems saw a decline in market share compared to their popularity in Q1: the BNB Smart Chain ecosystem’s market share fell by 1.3 percentage points to 4.1%, while the Cosmos ecosystem’s market share fell by 2.0 percentage points to 2.5%, and the Avalanche ecosystem’s market share fell by 1.8 percentage points to 2.1%.

Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast Ecosystems Rank at the Top

The Bitcoin, Tron, and Blast ecosystems have seen an increase in investor interest since Q1, which has vaulted them to the top of the rankings for Bitcoin-enhanced and native memecoins that support the Rune Standard. Similarly, the market share of the Tron ecosystem grew from 0.02% to 1.02%, and the market share of the Blast ecosystem grew from 0.30% to 0.75%.

These 3 blockchain ecosystems replaced the Injective, PulseChain, and Hedera ecosystems, with investor interest shares falling by 0.21 to 0.34 percentage points.

Top 20 Most Popular Blockchain Ecosystems

Among the 67 blockchain ecosystems, the 20 most popular blockchain ecosystems ranked by investor interest share by 2024 are as follows: