The public blockchains in the bear market are experiencing stark contrasts: Tron remains at the top, while Movement only earns $3 per day.

A recent Nansen dashboard reveals a stark concentration of revenue in the public blockchain market, with only a handful of chains generating significant income while many newer, highly-funded projects struggle to earn even basic figures.

Market Leaders Dominate: The top six chains (Tron, Solana, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Bitcoin, Base) generated over $17.2M in weekly protocol revenue, accounting for the vast majority of all user spending. Tron led with $6.56M, followed by Solana ($3.17M) and Ethereum ($2.68M). Their combined revenue is more than 16 times that of all other chains combined.
Mid-Tier Chains Struggle: Chains ranked 7th to 11th, like HyperEVM, Polygon, and Avalanche, have weekly revenues between $75,600 and $204,800. Most are experiencing negative fee growth, barely reaching the $100,000 weekly threshold and showing a significant gap behind the leaders.
Low Revenue Floods the Market: A large number of smaller chains generate minimal revenue. Many, including Aptos, ZKsync, and Plasma, earn between a few thousand to tens of thousands per week, translating to less than $500 per day. Once-promising Layer 2 solutions like ZKsync saw weekly fees plummet to just $6,480.
Newer Chains Earn Negligible Income: Recently launched, well-funded projects like Somnia ($193/day), Berachain ($45/day), and Movement ($3/day) have extremely low protocol revenue, highlighting their failure to attract meaningful user activity despite significant investment.

The data underscores a harsh reality: most public blockchains have consumed substantial venture capital but failed to build valuable ecosystems, becoming negligible in the on-chain fee market during the bear market.

Author: jk

Nansen, an on-chain data platform, has recently launched a 7-day protocol revenue tracking feature that shows only 10 of the many public chains claiming to be "next-generation" have generated more than $100,000 in protocol revenue over the past week. Apart from the recently launched Monad, other highly funded public chain projects launched since the end of last year, such as Movement, Berachain, and Somnia, are now generating less than four figures in daily revenue.

Let's take a look at the detailed data.

The head concentration effect is obvious.

According to Nansen's newly launched public chain dashboard, the protocol revenue rankings over the past 7 days show an extreme concentration at the top. Tron leads by a wide margin with $6.56 million in weekly fee revenue, firmly holding the top spot despite its fee growth rate of only 0.4%. This demonstrates Tron's continued dominance in stablecoin transfers and payments. Solana follows closely behind with $3.17 million in weekly fee revenue, boasting over 15.51 million active addresses and 415 million transactions, making it the public chain with the highest transaction volume. Even amidst the high drawdowns of the bear market, its fee revenue still maintains a positive growth of 2%.

Ethereum, a traditional giant, ranked third with $2.68 million in weekly fee revenue. It's worth noting that while Ethereum's active addresses surged by 20% and transaction volume increased by 4.1%, fee revenue plummeted by 54%, likely due to the impact of the bear market.

BNB Chain ranked fourth with $2.62 million in weekly fee revenue, Bitcoin ranked fifth with $1.68 million, and Base Chain ranked sixth with $532,600. These six companies alone contributed a total of approximately $17.24 million in weekly fee revenue, accounting for the vast majority of user spending in the entire blockchain ecosystem.

How significant is it exactly? According to data compiled by Nansen, the total revenue of all chains excluding the top six is only approximately $1,059,000 (US$1.06 million). In other words, the fee revenue of the top six public chains is more than 16 times the sum of all the remaining chains.

The waist-length public chain barely survived

The public blockchains ranked 7th to 11th include HyperEVM, Polygon, Monad, Arbitrum, and Avalanche, with weekly fee revenues ranging from $75,600 to $204,800. HyperEVM's weekly fee revenue was $204,800, but its fees decreased by 49%, showing a clear cooling trend. Polygon's weekly fee revenue was $183,100, with active addresses and transaction volume increasing by 15% and 10% respectively, but its fee revenue still decreased by 23%.

Avalanche, on the other hand, has fallen below the threshold of earning $100,000 a week.

Although these public chains have barely reached or are close to the threshold of $100,000 in weekly revenue, there is still an order of magnitude gap compared to the leading public chains, and most chains are experiencing negative growth in fee revenue, with a general decline due to the bear market.

A large number of low-income public blockchains flood the market.

Public chains ranked 12th and below saw a sharp decline in weekly fee revenue. Many small and medium-sized public chains are not only facing a significant drop in fee revenue, but also a continued shrinkage in the number of active addresses and transaction volume.

Chains like Bitlayer, Starknet, and Linea are seeing weekly fee revenues between $25,500 and $37,300, with most experiencing double-digit negative growth. Aptos, once a highly anticipated high-performance public chain, only managed $12,500 in weekly fee revenue, a 5.8% decrease. Some well-known Layer 2 solutions are also facing difficulties. ZKsync's weekly fee revenue was a mere $6,480, with transaction volume plummeting by 40% and fee revenue by 47%, indicating a complete collapse. Plasma's data is even more alarming; although its weekly fee revenue is still $5,240, its transaction volume has plummeted by 79%, and fee revenue has decreased by 60%. Chains like Scroll, Sonic, Ronin, and Sei are hovering between $2,000 and $3,500 in weekly fee revenue.

These figures mean that these public blockchains generate less than $500 in fee revenue per day.

In contrast, for newer public chains such as Somnia, Berachain, and Movement, according to DeFiLlama data, Somnia earns $193 per day, Bera earns $45, and Movement earns only $3 (about 20 RMB), with a 30-day income of only $92 (about 650 RMB).

These data reflect a harsh market reality: numerous public blockchains have consumed huge amounts of venture capital and attracted numerous developers to invest their time and energy, but ultimately failed to build a truly valuable user ecosystem. During the bear market, their presence in the on-chain fee market, where users vote with real money, has become negligible.