Ronin’s and ZKsync’s on-chain metrics dropped significantly in 2025

According to Nansen data, onchain activity has decreased significantly on several major networks, with 11 blockchains posting active addresses last year.

Ronin fell by 70%, Bitcoin recorded a 7.2% decrease. Several Ethereum Layer-2 networks have made the list.

Nansen's data showed a decline in trading activity on many of the same networks. ZKsync recorded one of the biggest declines, with transactions down 90 percent.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum base layer recorded a 25% increase in active addresses and a more than 20% increase in transactions.

Networks with the biggest drop in usage

Pixel is a popular game that moved from Polygon to Ronin in the second half of 2023. At the time, Ronin had nearly 20,000 daily active users before the arrival of the Pixel, a significant increase in activity that quickly made Ronin the second most active chain in terms of daily users.

As of December 2024, Pixels has registered nearly 300,000 daily active users, Dapradar reported. Since then, the game's popularity has waned, and Ronin's onchain activity has fallen by the wayside, reflecting the network's reliance on hit games.

Many Ethereum layer-2 networks experienced a drop in usage as activity related to airdrops slowed down. ZKsync's token weather claim opens in June 2024. The network said around 700,000 wallets were eligible, fending off criticism of its Sybil filter. According to Nansen's data, more than 40% of weather bags sell their classification immediately. Shiblet appeared on the list following the October 2024 airdrop, after which onchain activity slowed.

Arbitrum saw active addresses fall by 3%, although its nearly 31 million users still ranked it among the top 10 networks in terms of activity. Ethereum's package airdrops in 2023, and transaction volume rose 36 percent last year to 734.5 million, beating Ethereum's 507 million transactions. The arbitrage has seen activity from tokenized assets, including the 500 US stocks published by Robinhood on the network.

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Base and Optimism are prominent among Ethereum layer-2 networks. Both posted active addresses and transaction volumes increase. Base has no native token and has never done an airdrop. Onchain activity has soared alongside interest in places like memecoins, AI-related applications and decentralized exchanges.

Solana has registered more than 1 billion active addresses in the industry, followed by Tron and Ethereum. BBNB Chain saw a 159% increase in active addresses, while Bitcoin was the only network to decline out of the top five, alongside a 22% drop in transactions.

What the failures do and don't show.

The data showed a somewhat consistent relationship between onchain usage and token prices. Although active addresses increased by 66%, the price of Solana decreased last year, while the value of the BNB (BNB) token increased with the increase in network activity.

A year-over-year decline doesn't necessarily indicate the end of problems for the respective networks. Onchain activity can fluctuate significantly when applications are migrated, incentives are lost, or users switch between chains.

Telegram-connected blockchain The Open Network (TON) also recorded a 47% drop in active addresses and a 51% drop in transactions, a change that marked growth from 2024. Telegram-based mini-games are driving that early activity, attracting users beyond the platform's typical crypto-native audience.

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Hamster Kombat was one of the most popular examples. The touch-based game lowered the barrier to entry with simple mechanics and generated high levels of engagement with users waiting for future token airdrops. According to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the viral game attracted 239 million users in three months, and by the end of September, more than 130 million had qualified for the airdrop.

Tons of active addresses reached about 2.5 million per day on September 30, according to Nansen data. Activity fell back when engagement associated with Hamster Kombat cooled, showing how short-lived increases can distort year-over-year comparisons.

A few chains were used after advertising

Last year's blockchain data showed that onchain activity is switching between networks more quickly than being tied to any chain. Its use has fallen sharply on blockchains where the movement is focused on small applications, incentive programs or viral moments.

At the same time, those declines do not directly reflect broader ecosystem decline. In many cases, activity slows down after periods of reduced growth, showing how year-over-year comparisons are skewed by hype cycles, airdrops or short-term applications.

Solana offers a useful comparison. The surge brought users, liquidity, and applications that continued to support the network through 2024 and early 2025, before memecoin-led activity cooled toward the end of the year.

Solana's daily active addresses reached over 9 million at the peak of memecoin trading on October 22, 2024. In December, daily users hovered between 2 million and 3 million. While this represents a sharp pullback from the highs, the move has been consistently higher before reaching its highs.

Much of last year's decline in onchain activity was driven by the search for short-term profits, but networks like Solana, BNB Chain, and Base have shown signs of continued use beyond virality, leaving more reverse chains to stand out.

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