Public Chains 2025: The Bustle Belongs to the Casino, the Desolation to the Ecosystem
The 2025 public blockchain landscape reveals a stark divide between hype and reality, with a severe concentration of value and widespread "zombification" of projects. Analysis of DeFiLlama's on-chain fee data exposes a critical structural issue: the crypto space is dominated by a "profit concentration and long-tail zombie" era.
Notable examples highlight this crisis. Algorand, a chain with a $1 billion market cap and advanced technology, generated a mere $17 in daily fees, while Cardano, a top-10 asset, saw only around $6,000. These "classic chains" are likened to empty, expensive cities with no real economic activity.
The biggest value capturers are not the most technologically elegant chains. Tron leads with $1.24 million in daily fees, succeeding as a low-cost payment rail for USDT transfers—crypto's only true mass-adoption use case. Solana ($600k daily) thrives as a high-frequency casino for meme coins and speculation, and Base ($105k daily) demonstrates that distribution (via Coinbase) is more critical than pure technology. The only validated business models generating significant fees are low-cost payments, high-frequency speculation, and, to a lesser extent, Ethereum's asset settlement layer.
The VC-driven model is failing. New chains like Sui, Sei, and Starknet, which raised hundreds of millions, show a severe disconnect between their high valuations and meager daily fee revenue (ranging from $320 to $12,000). Their lifecycle often follows a "pump and dump" pattern: VC funding -> airdrop farming -> token listing -> user exodus -> collapsed on-chain activity. The industry suffers from a massive oversupply of block space with a dire lack of killer applications.
The article concludes that investors must shift from valuing narratives to scrutinizing financials. They should avoid "zombie coins" with high valuations and negligible fees, focus on chains with organic, fee-generating demand, acknowledge that distribution and community are now more valuable than pure tech, and see through the VC subsidy game. This is a necessary market correction; only by paying for real, generated value—not promised future stories—can the industry achieve healthy growth.
比推12/18 06:36
