Nansen's latest launch of the 7-day protocol revenue tracking feature has opened the black box of the "real income structure" in the public chain ecosystem. Over the past few years, dozens of public chains claiming to be "next-generation," "super high TPS," and "highly funded" have been launched intensively. However, when the bear market squeezes out the bubbles and speculative traffic recedes, what remains is the most direct test—who are users willing to pay real money for?
From the revenue data, among all the new public chains claiming to challenge Ethereum and reshape the underlying architecture, only 10 chains have achieved protocol revenues exceeding $100,000 in the past 7 days, while most other projects have fallen into a situation of daily revenues of less than four digits. Even chains like Berachain, Movement, and Somnia, which were once shining with high funding, now have daily revenues as low as hundreds, tens, or even single-digit dollars. Some chains have monthly revenues that are even less than the budget for a team dinner.
The contemporary public chain track seems to be flourishing, but very few can survive on a "business model," while most are barely holding on with residual funding and sunk costs. The bear market never believes in narratives; on-chain data does not lie. It only reflects one fact: where users are, where there are real demands, there is value.
In Nansen's dashboard, the dominance of leading public chains has almost reached a "crushing monopoly." Tron ranks first with a weekly revenue of $6.56 million, maintaining strong appeal in the stablecoin transfer and payment sectors. Although growth is only 0.4%, the scale is already large enough to completely suppress competitors.
Solana ranks second with a weekly revenue of $3.17 million, boasting over 15.51 million active addresses and a transaction volume in the hundreds of millions, demonstrating extraordinary vitality under high concurrency and high usage scenarios. Ethereum's weekly revenue is $2.68 million; although fee revenue has plummeted by 54% due to bear market sentiment, active addresses and transaction volume continue to grow, indicating its importance as an ecological infrastructure remains solid.
BNBChain, Bitcoin, and Base together form the "super public chain club" in the top six by revenue, contributing a total of $17.24 million in weekly revenue, accounting for the vast majority of industry fee expenditures.
To make the numbers more intuitive: aside from these six chains, the total weekly revenue of all other chains is only $1.06 million. In other words, the revenue of the leading public chains is more than 16 times that of all other chains combined.
Narratives and funding may be diverse, but revenue and user scale will always be oligopolistic. While the vast majority of chains are still competing for attention, developers, and traffic subsidies, the leading chains have long locked in real demand and formed a flywheel effect of "scale → revenue → reinvestment → larger scale."
Public chains have never been a fair competition; they resemble a long slope with thick snow determined by network effects and capital accumulation. The current result is: the leading chains become more dominant, while newcomers find it increasingly difficult to catch up.
Chains ranked 7th to 11th, such as HyperEVM, Polygon, Monad, Arbitrum, and Avalanche, appear to "still maintain decency," with weekly revenues ranging from $75,000 to $200,000. However, further observation reveals they are in a structural dilemma.
HyperEVM's revenue has reached $204,800, but fees have decreased by 49% month-on-month, indicating a rapid cooling. Polygon's active addresses and transaction volume have both grown by double digits, but revenue has still declined by 23%, suggesting that on-chain behavior is driven more by low fees and subsidies rather than genuine willingness to pay.
Avalanche has already fallen below the $100,000 weekly revenue threshold, gradually sliding into a phase of "insufficient scale, unstable income." Even though these chains are stronger than long-tail chains, the gap between them and leading public chains is "an order of magnitude gap," and most mid-tier chains have shown a significant decline in fees during the bear market.
The reason is simple: when subsidies weaken and users must make choices with real costs, they will gravitate towards chains with higher value density. The public chain track is not about "being able to run means a future," but rather "whether it can stand firm without subsidies."
The performance of mid-tier chains proves one thing: ecological vibrancy does not equal users' willingness to pay, and attractive growth data does not equal a sustainable business model.
From the 12th place onward, it is almost a cliff-like curve. Bitlayer, Starknet, and Linea have weekly revenues of only $25,000 to $37,000, with most showing double-digit negative growth. Aptos, once regarded as a "representative of high-performance public chains," has a weekly revenue of only $12,500.
Even more shocking is the complete collapse of multiple projects in the Layer 2 track: ZKsync has a weekly revenue of $6,480, with transaction volume plummeting by 40% and fee revenue dropping by 47%; Plasma has a weekly revenue of only $5,240, with transaction volume down by 79% and fees down by 60%; chains like Scroll, Ronin, Sei, and Sonic have revenues as low as dozens or hundreds of dollars per day.
For chains, a daily revenue of $2,000 is considered "survival," but many chains can't even reach $500 a day.
Among the newly launched public chains, which have raised over $100 million, Somnia has a daily revenue of $193, Berachain $45, and Movement only $3. Movement's total revenue over 30 days is even less than $100, roughly equivalent to the cost of a hot pot meal.
No matter how large the funding scale, how high the TPS, or how exaggerated the promotion, if it cannot even surpass the fee income of a small DApp, this chain is commercially "dead."
The vitality of a chain has never been in funding or narratives, but in whether the ecosystem can generate real economic activity and whether users are willing to pay. Today's data proves: a large number of public chains have burned through massive funding, attracted a batch of developers, but ultimately failed to retain users.
They survived on subsidies during the bull market and quietly exited during the bear market—chains may still be running, but users have already left.
Related: Solana's on-chain capital flow indicates a significant supply shift, with SOL trading approaching a critical support level.
Original: “High-Funded Star Public Chains Face Revenue Collapse, The Bear Market Reality for ZKsync and Aptos”
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