Author: stacymuur Source: substack Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
How many L1 chains are there? There are already hundreds.
Coinmarketcap tracks 124 L1 tokens, not counting projects that have not yet conducted a token generation event (TGE). In this study, I will take you through the relevant data of the largest L1 chains from Q1 to Q3, highlight the changes in leadership, and explain the drivers of growth.
Bitcoin's dominance in L1 fully diluted valuation has steadily increased this year. At the beginning of the year, Bitcoin accounted for 60% of L1 FDV, but by the end of the third quarter, its dominance exceeded 66%. As Bitcoin’s influence grows, Ethereum’s FDV share continues to decline, from 19% in the first quarter to 15.5% currently.
This isn’t the only change in market share:
TON’s dominance increased from 0.81% to 1.45%, making it the fifth-ranked L1 chain by FDV.
Sui rose from 0.52% to 0.83%, currently ranking eighth.
Filecoin fell from 0.92% to 0.38%.
Dymension entered the top 20 and now accounts for 0.09%.
Sui's FDV fell 57.1% in the second quarter, but increased 86.6% in the following quarter. Grayscale launched an investment trust for Sui and Bittensor in mid-August, so the price of SUI may rise as a result.
Quick Insight: The total circulating market value of the 56 L1 chains tracked by Token Terminal is $1.87 trillion, while the total FDV is $2.01 trillion. This indicates that there is still $86 billion of value that has not yet been unlocked and entered the market through new tokens.
As the quarter draws to a close, the MAU chart shows an increase in concentration, with Solana now accounting for 56% of the top 20 L1 chains. This growth was primarily driven by the memecoin craze, but by the end of Q3, the craze began to cool.
Similarly, TON's MAU has also grown significantly, from 0.39% at the beginning of the year to 7.31% currently, placing TON in third place in the MAU ranking.
The number of active users on the first-layer network has surged from 57 million at the beginning of the year to 149 million now.
Here are some highlights:
Solana: +79.9 million MAU
TON: +10.6 million MAU
Tron: +3.2 million MAU
Aptos: +3.0 million MAU
Ronin: +2.2 million MAU
Ethereum: No change
Bitcoin: -3.7 million monthly active users
BNB Chain: -4.2 million monthly active users
In the third quarter of 2024, the andTON TVL increased significantly. During this period, the halving occurred and interest in Ordinals remained. In Q3, Bitcoin's TVL fell by 35.6% due to declining investor sentiment and the stock market crash in August 2024. TON's TVL increased 6 times compared to Q1 2024.
Avalanche and Cardano both saw a drop in TVL of more than 40% in Q2. As other blockchains have grown, interest in Cardano has declined, and therefore multiple indicators across the ecosystem have declined. Avalanche is more favored by developers than investors, so its market indicators are lower than technical indicators.
Quick Insight:Tron, Solana, Ethereum, and TON now generate 98% of all L1 revenue.
Throughout the year, transaction activity on L1 chains remained relatively stable, with Aptos experiencing two notable spikes. However, there have been some structural changes in the composition of transaction activity.
Since the beginning of the year, TONand Tron have both seen an increase in daily transactions. In contrast, Avalanche’s metric fell from 1.4M to 0.18M.
This week, SUI transaction volume has surpassed NEAR, AVAX, and ATOM combined.
TON now has 10 million more token holders than Bitcoin.
Since the beginning of the year, average Bitcoin transaction fees have fallen from $12 to $1.5.
According to Token Terminal, Ethereum has the largest core developer community, followed by Cosmos and Internet Computer.
Code commit activity for the top 20 tracked chains has been steadily declining since the beginning of the year.
Currently, the number of contracts deployed on TON has surged from 8.1K per day to 2 million.
By TPS, the top 3 chains tracked on Token Terminal are Internet Computer, Solana, and TON.
Gnosis has the highest P/E ratio (fully diluted) at 16,000 times. Tron has the lowest P/E ratio at only 5.18 times.
Solana and Sui saw significant bridge inflows in Q3 2024. Aptos, BSC, Bitcoin, and Ethereum saw steadily declining inflows.
To fully understand the state of L1 and set realistic expectations, we need data on upcoming events that could serve as catalysts for structural change. Here are some of the most important events based on data from Messari Intel.
Ethereum: Pectra (Prague-Electra) Hard Fork
Solana: Solana Mobile Stack (Saga and Seeker) and Firedancer Validator Client Release
Polygon: Polygon Miden Mainnet and AggLayer
Cosmos: Gaia v20.0.0 Upgrade
Internet Computer: Chain Convergence
NEAR Protocol: Chain Abstraction Stack
left;">Celo: L2 Mainnet Launch
Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom): Sonic Mainnet Launch and S Token Release
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