Written by Frank, PANews

In the autumn of 2025, the competitive landscape in the public blockchain space is undergoing a dramatic shift, with a fierce battle for users, funding, and ecosystem momentum intensifying. Solana, once the king, faces another wave of declining traffic, while BNB Chain, leveraging its robust new ecosystem and technological upgrades, is generating a significant user acquisition siphon effect. Meanwhile, the Ethereum mainnet continues its steady growth amidst the hype, while the Layer 2 market presents a complex landscape of mixed performance.

PANews will deeply analyze the latest data from major mainstream public chains to reveal the underlying motivations and future trends behind this traffic migration.

Solana: Multiple data indicators decline and face traffic outflow challenges

Solana's performance has declined over the past three months, and it has begun to lose its leading position in multiple indicators. This is most evident in the number of active addresses and the issuance of new tokens. As of September 24, the Solana network had 2.19 million active wallets, a 63.5% decrease from 6 million in June. This level is even lower than the popularity before August 2024, and this decline is not an isolated phenomenon. In terms of the creation of new tokens, the current data value is around 31,000, which is also a significant drop from the high of over 80,000 per day in January. This decline has also occurred recently. On September 15, the daily new token data remained at around 50,000.

Regarding DEX trading volume, according to Dexscreene data, in the last 24 hours, BSC's on-chain trading volume was approximately $14.3 billion, while Solana's was around $8.3 billion. Solana is no longer the most actively traded public chain. However, Solana still saw 5,919 new trading pairs in the last 24 hours, still ranking first.

In terms of funds, Solana's capital outflow has also been quite obvious in the past week, with a net outflow of approximately US$63.4 million on the chain.

In terms of outflows, deBridge data shows that the BSC chain has become the primary source of capital outflow from Solana. In the past week, approximately $47 million flowed from Solana to BSC, while only $28 million flowed back from BSC. From this perspective, BSC is indeed siphoning off Solana's liquidity. Although Solana has the potential to benefit from ETFs and multiple DATs in the capital market, and recently passed the latest Alpenglow upgrade in September, these have failed to boost the on-chain ecosystem's popularity.

BSC: Strong Rise, Traffic Surge Aiming for Solana's Dominance

BNB Chain has been on an upward trajectory in recent months, poised to surpass Solana. First, regarding the number of active wallet addresses, as of September 25th, BSC had approximately 4.8 million daily active addresses, surpassing Solana's 2.19 million. In April, this figure was only 2.6 million, an increase of approximately 84.6%. Furthermore, the number of daily transactions has also seen a significant increase, currently reaching approximately 17 million. On August 30th, this figure was only around 10 million, a roughly 70% increase over the past month. This represents a nearly sixfold increase compared to the average daily transaction volume of 3 million at the beginning of the year.

In terms of capital flows, BSC saw a net inflow of approximately $73.5 million over the past week, making it the third-largest public blockchain in terms of inflow. According to deBridge data, this inflow primarily came from Solana, Arbitrum, and the Ethereum mainnet.

The reasons behind these changes are partly due to the recent wealth effect on Alpha and the recent popularity of Aster. On September 25th, Aster's daily fees reached an astonishing $12.92 million, second only to Tether. Contract trading volume reached $35.8 billion, surpassing Hyperliquid.

On September 23rd, BNB Chain announced on the X platform that validators are proposing to reduce the minimum gas price on the BNB Smart Chain from 0.1 Gwei to 0.05 Gwei, while also accelerating the block interval from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds to maintain competitiveness with the fastest blockchains in the cryptocurrency space. Once this upgrade is complete, BSC will be nearly on par with Solana in terms of performance. Clearly, this BSC chain's assault on Solana is more than just a meme-fueled attack like the previous Four.me launch.

Ethereum: Steady Growth Amidst the Hustle and Bustle

While the Ethereum mainnet's on-chain activity isn't currently noticeable, it's seeing significant growth in terms of data. For example, daily transaction counts, for the entirety of 2024, will remain around 1 million. After April 2025, this number will begin to climb significantly, currently hovering between 1.5 million and 1.8 million, a record high for Ethereum.

A similar trend has also emerged in terms of daily active users. In August, Ethereum's daily active users peaked at 557,200, a nearly three-year high. Furthermore, this surge was no longer a flash in the pan, but rather sustained over time. As of September 22nd, daily active users remained above 500,000.

Of course, as a public chain primarily focused on DeFi and infrastructure, the Ethereum mainnet's rising popularity doesn't appear to be driven by new projects. For example, data from September 25th showed 198 newly created transaction pools on the Ethereum mainnet, generating approximately $11.5 million in trading volume, representing only 0.3% of the total $3.88 billion in on-chain trading volume that day.

Another major change in Ethereum's value is its TVL. Starting in April 2025, Ethereum's TVL soared from $45 billion to $97 billion. However, this increase is likely due to rising ETH prices. The amount of staked ETH has been declining since April. This suggests that the amount of ETH staked on the Ethereum chain is decreasing, which suggests a different source for the increased TVL. This increase may be due to the growth of stablecoins. As of September 25th, the market capitalization of Ethereum's stablecoins reached $161.7 billion, nearly doubling from $84 billion in December of the previous year.

Base: Transactions remain active, but user churn sounds the alarm

On-chain transactions on the Base Chain remain relatively active. The number of daily transactions has increased significantly, from approximately 8.4 million in August to 14.48 million on September 21st, reaching a new all-time high, surpassing the peak in January. Furthermore, the creation of new tokens is also active. Dexscreene, for example, created 3,586 new trading pools in the last 24 hours, a figure even higher than that of the BSC chain.

However, Base's daily active users have shown a significant decline since July, dropping from a peak of 2.4 million to 797,000 on September 22nd, a 67% drop. Furthermore, Base experienced a net outflow of $99.6 million in the past week, making it one of the public chains with the highest net outflow.

Overall, Base is still the most active public chain among Ethereum L2. Even though there has been a decline in daily active data, it still has advantages in various data.

Arbitrum: L2's leading position faces a test

Arbitrum maintains its leading position among Ethereum's L2 stablecoins in terms of TVL and stablecoins, but its daily transaction count is highly volatile. On September 22nd, Arbitrum's daily transaction count reached 4.28 million, compared to 1.92 million the day before. This significant fluctuation reflects Arbitrum's transaction volume over the past year, which has remained highly volatile overall.

Arbitrum ranked first among all public chains in terms of capital inflows, with a net inflow of $217 million over the past week. Looking at the sources of inflows, USDT 0 and Hyperliquid still account for the majority, demonstrating that Arbitrum still plays a significant role as a funding bridge for Hyperliquid. However, with the launch of Hyperliquid's own stablecoin, USDH, this tailwind may soon fade.

Hyperliquid: Facing intense competition from emerging rivals

From a public blockchain perspective, Hyperliquid's data isn't impressive. While its daily active users have seen significant growth, they still only reach 65,200. Transaction counts are only around 3 million per week. However, its TVL has seen significant growth this year, rising from $1.9 billion in April to $6.1 billion.

From a DEX perspective, Hyperliquid has recently come under significant competitive pressure from Aster. Since August, trading volume has shown a clear downward trend, falling from a range of $10 billion to $20 billion to a range of $5 billion to $10 billion.

Sui: Growth has reached a bottleneck, and emerging public chains have entered a period of silence?

Sui's development seems to have reached a bottleneck in 2025. The number of transactions has remained around 10 million since 2025, with no significant increase.

While the number of active addresses is significantly higher than before March 2024, it has fluctuated between 500,000 and 1 million daily active users over the past year, showing no clear upward or downward trend. Sui's TVL, on the other hand, has experienced a significant decline, falling from $1.24 billion in July to $575 million. Only 40 new transaction pools were created on-chain in a 24-hour period, far lower than during MEME's previous active phase. It seems that Sui, once a highly anticipated emerging public chain, is entering a period of inactivity.

Avalanche: On-chain activity surges, RWA may become a future focus

After years of relative inactivity, Avalanche has recently experienced a surge. The most obvious metric is the number of active addresses. Since September, the number of daily active addresses on Avalanche L1s has surged from over 100,000 to millions, even reaching a record high of 29 million on September 22nd. The number of transactions has also surged, reaching nearly 50 million.

However, this surge appears to be unrelated to the activity of Avalanche (C-Chain). Looking at C-Chain data alone, the number of active addresses remains around 200,000. While this has increased, the gap with the overall number is significant. PANews speculates that this unusual increase may be related to stress testing of one of Avalanche's subnetworks. In August, Grove Finance planned to deploy approximately $250 million in RWAs on the Avalanche blockchain through Centrifuge and Janus Henderson.

On September 23rd, AgriFORCE announced its rebranding to AVAX One, aiming to raise $550 million and become the first Nasdaq-listed company to focus solely on acquiring Avalanche (AVAX) tokens. From an ecosystem perspective, Avalanche is currently leaning towards developing RWAs and stablecoins.

World Chain: The "truth" behind the huge capital inflow, team token migration

World Chain is mentioned here because it ranked second in the on-chain net inflow rankings over the past week, with a net inflow of $119 million. However, this inflow of funds may not be driven by users, but rather a strategic internal token migration by the Worldcoin team. On September 22, the Worldcoin team wallet transferred 110 million WLD from the Ethereum mainnet, of which 85 million (US$111 million) were transferred across chains to World Chain.

Recent data clearly demonstrates that competition in the public blockchain space has entered a new phase. Leveraging the wealth created by its phenomenal applications and robust ecosystem, BSC has successfully captured significant traffic and funding from Solana, staging a classic comeback. Ethereum, relying on its robust network consensus and foundation, has demonstrated its stabilizing power as a "ballast stone" in stablecoins and infrastructure.

At the same time, internal competition within Layer 2 and the growth struggles of emerging public chains demonstrate that this is a market driven by both technological iteration and narrative building. No public chain's leadership is permanent. Only by continuously innovating, building a thriving developer ecosystem, and capturing the next market hotspot can a company remain invincible in this endless battle for traffic. The future landscape remains uncertain.