Solana Continues to Lead Crypto Interest for Second Year: An Analysis

In 2025, Solana captured a remarkable 26.79% of global interest in blockchain narratives, maintaining its status as the leading crypto ecosystem for the second consecutive year, despite a drop in market share and increased competition. Base and Ethereum claimed the second and third spots, respectively, while newer players such as Sui and BNB Chain made significant gains.

Key Takeaways

Solana Leads Again: For the second year, Solana took 26.79% of interest in blockchain narratives despite losing market share.
Top Competitors: Base and Ethereum followed at 13.94% and 13.43%, respectively, with Ethereum seeing slight growth.
Emerging Players: Sui and BNB Chain made significant strides, doubling their market presence to capture fourth and fifth positions.
New Developments: Major platform integrations and new ecosystems bolstered Solana's dominance, while several competitors struggled.
Institutional Adoption: Solana's potential for institutional use was validated by Bhutan's launch of a gold-backed digital token on its network.

Solana Dominates Crypto Attention for Second Straight Year: Analysis

Solana’s Performance Analysis

Solana maintained a commanding 26.79% share of global interest in blockchain narratives throughout 2025, reinforcing its position as the premier crypto ecosystem for the second year in a row, even amid growing competition and a decline in market share. According to CoinGecko’s latest blockchain ecosystem analysis, Base and Ethereum secured the second and third positions, while newer entrants such as Sui and BNB Chain surged in prominence.

The layer-1 network saw its market share decrease from 38.79% in 2024, dropping by 12 percentage points due to its challenges in expanding beyond meme-coin speculation, despite a notable increase in institutional adoption following U.S. ETF launches. This decline also resulted in Solana falling out of the top five crypto narratives rankings, where it was overtaken by themes such as AI agents and Made in USA initiatives.

Base and Ethereum Stand Steady

Coinbase’s Base ecosystem maintained its second-place ranking, capturing 13.94% of investor interest, which was a slight decrease from 16.81% in 2024. Despite this drop, the decline was less severe thanks to key developments, including the rebranding of Coinbase Wallet to the Base app, Shopify's integration of USDC payments, and the rollout of new facilitation methods.

Ethereum secured the third spot with 13.43% mindshare, marking an increase of 2.7 percentage points compared to the previous year. This growth reduced the gap between it and Base, occurring even as investors expressed concerns about Ethereum's price performance and competitive standing amidst the rise of faster networks.

However, Ethereum's scaling layer is facing consolidation challenges, with Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism accounting for nearly 90% of all L2 transactions—Base alone represents over 60%. Analysts from 21Shares predict that many of the 50-plus competing L2s are unlikely to survive past 2026 due to a steep decrease in activity among smaller rollups, leading to what they call 'zombie chains' with dwindling usage and liquidity.

Sui and BNB Chain Rapid Growth

Sui and BNB Chain emerged as notable gainers this year, each more than doubling their market presence to secure fourth and fifth positions. Sui achieved the largest growth, rising by 6.9 percentage points to reach 11.77%, positioning itself closely behind Ethereum and establishing itself as a serious competitor in blockchain narratives.

BNB Chain garnered 9.05% of mindshare following a 4.9 percentage point hike, fueled by the May launch of Binance Alpha, which pushed the network to lead in on-chain trading volumes. Additionally, the ecosystem benefitted from founder CZ’s renewed involvement and strong BNB price performance throughout the year.

Solana’s growth continued with significant platform integrations; for instance, in early December, Coinbase activated native DEX trading for Solana tokens within its mobile application, enabling users to swap assets on-chain for the first time. The exchange also confirmed plans to acquire Vector, a Solana-native trading platform, with the deal expected to close by the end of the year.

Solana Dominates Crypto - CoinGecko Top Blockchain by interest list

New Players Transform the Ecosystem

XRP Ledger and Bittensor emerged as the notable new entries in the top rankings, with XRP taking sixth place at 4.68% mindshare, while Bittensor, focused on AI, secured the ninth position with 1.91%. Additionally, Berachain and Abstract broke into the top 20 of new ecosystems tracked this year.

Hyperliquid saw the most remarkable rise, climbing from 0.01% in 2024 to 1.57% this year, moving up 44 spots in the rankings. This platform, which focuses on perpetual trading, marked a significant milestone by launching USDH as a stablecoin while establishing strong DEX infrastructure and community engagement that showcased its capacity for scalability.

In contrast, the TON ecosystem experienced a decline in its ranking following a 5.0 percentage point drop in mindshare, a stark contrast to Sui’s rise as a competitive force in its narrative.

Notably, Jupiter strengthened Solana’s ecosystem depth by announcing seven coordinated upgrades at Breakpoint, highlighted by the launch of JupUSD, a stablecoin developed with Ethena. The Solana DEX processed $1.08 trillion in combined spot and perpetual trading volumes year-to-date and maintained a total value locked of $2.7 billion, recently exiting beta for Jupiter Lend after reaching $1 billion in supply within just eight days.

Bhutan further validated Solana’s appeal for institutional use by launching TER, a gold-backed digital token running on the Solana network, distributed through DK Bank. This sovereign-backed initiative positions Bhutan among nations experimenting with state-issued tokenized assets and leverages Solana’s speed and efficiency.