On-chain activity is slowing down, despite the movements of significant volumes. Major L1 exchanges saw an outflow of active wallets.
Major L1 chains, including Solana, BNB Chain, and Ethereum, are showing a slowdown in general activity. The slowdown is marked against the last months of 2024, when enthusiasm brought on-chain users. Solana is down to between 2.3M and 1.7M daily active wallets, after reaching a peak at nearly 32M active wallets in September 2024.
BNB Chain got a boost from PancakeSwap and Aster, as well as curated meme interest, with around 4.7M daily active users based on data by Token Terminal.
Ethereum retains around 600K daily active addresses. L2 chain Polygon remains at around 86K wallets, with a higher baseline thanks to Polymarket usage. Base locks in 600K to 800K active users, though with increased trading volumes.
L1 activity slowed down the most on Solana
In the past year, Solana lost the biggest part of its activity. The slowdown of low-cost activities like NFT, DEX swaps, and meme minting and trading led to a further decline in activity.
Solana remains a leader in terms of fee production and still has sufficient liquidity. However, the chain has seen an outflow of retail users and a smaller community. Solana activity is now compensated by whales, large-scale investors, and more recently, ETFs.
The slowdown in on-chain transactions and active wallets also reflects the lack of user-oriented technologies with a low-cost entry point into crypto.
L1 activity also depends on short-term incentives, including point farming. The slowdown of specific airdrops based on activity also affected L1 chains.
L1 chains retain value
L1 chains retain their value transfers and economic activity, despite the outflow of wallets. Ethereum, for instance, carries over $6B in daily value transfers, up from $3.8B in November 2024.
Solana also increased the value of its DEX volume, from around $4B in late 2024 to $14B in November 2025. The recent outflow in low-value transactions has been replaced by fee-paying users and increased value activity. Solana saw $1.8B in stablecoin transfers for October, down from the anomalous range of $233B in December 2024.
The decrease in traffic also suggests that some of the L1 chains’ traffic was not entirely organic. The current L1 activity reflects the usage of the most active apps, with no signs of deliberate volume inflation.
As of November 2025, BNB Chain retains the biggest number of daily active users. PancakeSwap is the main driver of fees and paid activity. As with BTC and other chains, raw activity is meaningless and has been replaced by value-driven transfers, whale activity, and the usage of apps with available liquidity.