July public chain industry research report: Solana performs well in the volatile market, and Layer2 competition is fierce

Written by: Stella L

July,cryptocurrencyThe market is active and volatile, which reflects the overall trend of the global financial market. The listing of spot Ethereum ETP in the United States, coupled with the high praise of Bitcoin by former US President Trump, shows thatcryptocurrency行业的强韧性和巨大的增长潜力。市场情况复杂多变，比特币价格逐渐趋于稳定，而 Solana 则成为表现最为突出的货币之一；与此同时，以太坊在 ETP 上市后遭遇了一定程度的下跌压力。在这波波动中，公链cryptocurrency的总市值实现了小幅增长，主要得益于比特币和 Solana 等关键项目的带动。随着 Layer 2 领域的竞争日益激烈，不断涌现的创新项目和新兴力量正在重塑行业的竞争格局。

The data for this report comes from Footprint Analytics' public chain research page. This page provides an easy-to-use dashboard that contains the most critical statistics and indicators for understanding the public chain field and is updated in real time.

Crypto Market Overview

In July, volatility across financial markets increased. Large technology stocks and AI Related stocks performed poorly. The crypto industry has made important progress, including spot EthereumexchangeThe launch of exchange-traded products (ETPs) and the positive endorsement of Bitcoin by former US Republican presidential candidate and former President Trump.

July's price performance showed a divergent trend. At the end of the month, the impact of the German government's sale of Bitcoin weakened (ended on July 13), and Mt Gox's repayment distribution to its users had limited impact on the market. Bitcoin fluctuated during the month but ended July with a small increase. In addition to Bitcoin, Solana's performance was particularly eye-catching, with a monthly increase of 25%. In contrast, Ethereum's price fell after the launch of spot Ethereum ETPs in the US market. Although the launch of these ETPs supported the price of Ethereum, the subsequent selling pressure caused the price to fall.

Public Chain Overview

As of the end of July, the total market value of public chain cryptocurrencies has increased by 1.2% from June to 1.98 trillion US dollars. The market leaders are Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana, with market shares of 64.8%, 19.7%, 4.3% and 4.1% respectively. The absolute value of Bitcoin's share increased by 1.5%, Solana increased by 0.6%, and Ethereum decreased by 1.5%.

Data source: Public chain in July 2024TokenMarket capitalization share

In July, the cryptocurrency market experienced significant fluctuations. Bitcoin started at $62,923 at the beginning of the month and closed at $64,938 at the end of the month, achieving a growth of 3.2%. On July 5, Bitcoin hit its lowest point of the month at $56,608, and reached its highest point of $68,806 on July 27. Ethereum opened at $3,438 and fell to $3,243 at the end of the month, a drop of 5.7%. On July 7, Ethereum hit its lowest price of the month at $2,939, and reached its highest price of $3,542 on July 21.

Data source: Bitcoin and Ethereum price trends

SolanaTokenThe price increased by 18.2% and the market value increased by 18.9%. The craze for meme coins continued and the on-chain activity was active. For example, several Neiro TokenThe Doge Memecoin-inspired owner surged after announcing the adoption of Neiro, a 10-year-old rescue Shiba Inu.

Kaspa continues to perform strongly, with the token KAS price increasing by 14.5% and the market capitalization increasing by 15.7%. KAS hit a new all-time high of over $0.2 in July. The blockDAG (Block Directed Acyclic Graph) technology has received increasing attention, especially after Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA) announced last month that it would diversify its mining operations and expand to Kaspa.

Data source: Public chain token price and market value at the end of July 2024

In terms of total locked value (TVL), the TVL of public chains reached $76.5 billion at the end of July, which was basically the same as in June. Ethereum, TRON, and BNB chains continued to lead in TVL.

TON has become the fifth largest chain by token market value, but there is still a lot of room for growth in its DeFi field, and its TVL ranks ninth among public chains at $770 million.exchange STON.fi and DeDust account for more than 60% of TVL.

Core BlockchainThe TVL of the coin grew by 122.5% throughout the month, thanks to the launch of the Dual Staking model, which rewards users who stake Bitcoin in Core for a long time, increasing their BTC staking rewards when they also stake CORE.

Data source: TVL of public chains at the end of July 2024

In a month of volatility and mixed price performance, Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market on Polygon, stood out. Polymarket allows users to build portfolios based on their predictions and receive rewards if they are correct.BlockchainPolymarket ensures transparent trading on a wide range of topics including current events, politics and public health issues.SafetyThe US election brought extra attention to Polymarket, whose TVL doubled in July.

Development of major Layer 1 public chains in July 2024

BNB Chain

• On July 18, BNB Chain officially announced that it will hold the "Become a Champion Builder" hackathon in the third quarter of 2024, with a prize pool of more than US$500,000.

• BNB Chain's second Sunset fork plan has been completed.

Solana

• Solana launches $400,000 grant program for developers of Solana Actions and Blinks Tools.

NEAR

• Grayscale officially launches decentralized artificial intelligence fund Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund LLC, where Near is the highest weighted asset in the fund.

Sui

• Sui announced the launch of the Sui Index Framework, providing customizable access to Sui on-chain data.

Polygon

• Polygon launches a new ZK proof system "Plonky3" as an open source toolkit, which will be more universal than "Plonky2".

• Move language developer Movement Labs joins Polygon's AggLayer.

Ronin

• Sky Mavis releases 2024 H1 Review, over 3 million users downloaded Ronin in the past 6 months wallet, RON daily active addresses soared to a record high of 1.5 million.

Ton

• TON BlockchainA new Layer 2 network will be released based on Polygon technology.

• The TON Foundation has partnered with Mocaverse, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, to launch a $20 million ecosystem development plan.

Core

• Core announced that Animoca Brands has launched a validator node on the chain to support Core’sSafetysex and decentralization.

• The Core Foundation announced a dual staking model to increase Bitcoin staking returns.

Layer 2

In July, Ethereum Layer 2 experienced minor fluctuations as the price of Ethereum retreated after the launch of spot Ethereum ETPs in the U.S. market. Arbitrum One, Optimism, and Base led in terms of TVL market share, holding 59.8%, 20.2%, and 8.27%, respectively, but the monthly growth rate was less than 5%.

As on-chain activity declined after the airdrop, Blast’s TVL dropped by 14.3% and zkSync Era’s TVL dropped by 11.5%.

Scroll’s TVL grew by 13.2%, driven by activity on Scroll Canvas, a platform for collecting and displaying achievements, statuses, and on-chain certificates in the Scroll ecosystem. Users can interact with various projects in the ecosystem to earn achievements in the form of “badges.”

Data source: Ethereum Layer 2 Overview in July 2024 – Rollups (Bridge-related Indicators)

On the other hand, Bitcoin scaling solutions, including Layer 2 and sidechains, continued to grow in July, although the total TVL was lower than the high in June. Merlin, Bitlayer, and Rootstock accounted for the largest TVL market share, with 44.0%, 19.6%, and 10.3%, respectively.

Solv Protocol became the largest DeFi protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem at the end of July, with a TVL of $570 million, accounting for 32.3% of the total TVL of Bitcoin scaling solutions.

Data source: Bitcoin Ecosystem Public Chain TVL

The Layer 2 track is becoming increasingly competitive. A new project called TON Applications Chain (TAC) is working on TON BlockchainThe ecosystem is developing a Layer 2 solution. Backed by The Open Platform, an investor focused on the TON blockchain, TAC will utilize Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK).

Meanwhile, the first Move EVM Layer2 Movement blockchain launched its public testnet Parthenon, which was officially launched on July 30. Movement’s MOVEDROP project allowsCommunityParticipate in the process from testnet to mainnet.

Development of major Layer 2 public chains in July 2024

Arbitrum

• Arbitrum CommunityA proposal vote was launched to allow new Orbit chains to be deployed on any blockchain, with plans to open up permissions to deploy Orbit chains on networks other than Ethereum.

Optimism

• Optimism announced the results of Retro Funding 4, and plans to provide 10 million OP rewards to 207 projects, of which Zora and Layer 3 received 500,000 OPs respectively.

Starknet

• Eduard, founder of Starknet derivatives trading protocol ZKX, announced that ZKX will cease operations.

Base

• US politicians can accept cryptocurrency donations on the Base chain.

Merlin Chain

• Merlin Chain has teamed up with Ordzaar and OrdinSwap to launch the “Fourth Major Ordinal” whitelist event.

Rootstock

• Rootstock announced that it will host its first Ecosystem Summit on August 1st.

Blockchain Games

In July, a total of 1,588 games were active on major blockchain networks. BNB Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum dominated the market, accounting for 21.7%, 19.0%, and 15.1% of the market share, respectively.

Ronin, opBNB, and Saakuru Verse lead in on-chain DAUXiaobai Navigation, with average daily DAUs of 1.1 million, 479,600 and 354,500 respectively. At the end of July, their DAU market shares were 32.6%, 18.7% and 3.4% respectively.

Data source: Daily active users of various public chain blockchain games

Ronin's DAU market share increased significantly from 18.6% on July 1 to 32.6% on July 31, thanks to the recovery of Pixels data and the launch of new games Lumiterra and Fight League. In addition, games on Ronin performed well in user retention and frequently appeared on the weekly new user retention rankings. For example, in the last week of July, five games ranked in the top ten of new user retention.

opBNB's DAU share rose from 13.1% to 18.7% in July, thanks to the growing popularity of its games MEET48 and SERAPH: In The Darkness. In particular, SERAPH: In The Darkness, a dark fantasy ARPG game, has gained significant attention on opBNB since its launch in mid-July.

Oasys Layer 2 Saakuru Verse saw a significant increase in DAU in the last 10 days of June, but growth slowed in July, with DAU market share falling from 14.1% at the beginning of the month to 3.4% at the end of the month. Despite this, Saakuru still maintains the third highest average DAU among all chains. Saakuru's unique proxy model, where the chain operator (AAG) bears the transaction costs, enables users and developers to complete interactions without incurring gas fees, significantly lowering the entry barrier.

Base's DAU soared from 8.2K to 222.5K in one month, with an average DAU of 101.6K. This growth was mainly driven by the game BLOCKLORDS Dynasty.

For more blockchain gaming industry trends, please read"July 2024 Blockchain Game Research Report: Challenges and Opportunities of Market Volatility and Data Differentiation".

Financing

In July, the public chain industry recorded 9 rounds of financing events, totaling US$570 million, a decrease of 20.1% from June. Two of the events did not disclose the amount, and no Layer 1 announced a new round of financing.

Public chain financing events in July 2024 (data source:crypto-fundraising.info)

Pudgy Penguins’ parent company Igloo has raised $11 million in a funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Igloo has formed a new unit called Cube Labs to develop Abstract, a consumer-facing Layer 2 blockchain built on Matter Labs’ ZK Stack and EigenLayer’s EigenDA. This new blockchain aims to make decentralized application development easier, cheaper, and more efficient.Safety.

As the number of Layer 2 solutions continues to grow, the infrastructure that supports these Layer 2s is becoming a good business. In July, Ethereum Rollup deployment platform Caldera and Web3 AI infrastructure developer Network3 received new financing.

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