Solana Leads As Most Popular Blockchain Ecosystem For Second Consecutive Year – Report

[Ben Graham]

Solana (SOL) has emerged as the most popular blockchain ecosystem of 2025, securing its crown for the second consecutive year despite a significant decrease in chain-specific global interest compared to the previous year.

Solana Takes The Popularity Crown

On Monday, Solana was named the leading blockchain ecosystem by popularity in 2025 by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko. The study examined interest in blockchain ecosystems based on CoinGecko’s non-botted global web traffic from January 1 to December 14, 2025, only including ecosystems with actively listed coins and a non-zero percentage share of traffic.

As a result, a total of 62 blockchain ecosystems were included in the study. Out of the 62 blockchain ecosystems studied, the 20 most popular represented a majority of 95.60% of global interest in chain-specific narratives.

According to the report, the Solana ecosystem captured 26.79% of the global interest in chain-specific narratives this year, retaining its title as the most popular blockchain ecosystem for a second consecutive year.

The Base ecosystem followed in second place, accounting for 13.94% of global investor interest in chain-specific narratives this year, led by constructive developments and partnerships. However, its mindshare experienced a 2.9% decrease from the 16.81% recorded in 2024.

Similar to Solana and Base, the Ethereum ecosystem also retained its position from the 2024 list, ranking as the third most popular ecosystem with 13.43% of global interest. Meanwhile, Sui and BNB Chain moved up in the list, ranking 4th and 5th after more than doubling their mindshare in 2025.

Per the study, the Sui ecosystem recorded the largest mindshare growth, with a 6.9% year-over-year (YoY) increase to reach 11.77% of the total global interest in chain-specific narratives.

The BNB Chain ecosystem saw a 4.9% surge YoY to capture 9.05% in mindshare, fueled by the launch of Binance Alpha in May, which increased BNB Chain’s on-chain trading volumes, the report noted.

Notably, XRP Ledger, Bittensor & Hyperliquid lead new entrants into the top rankings, securing a spot in the top 10 this year.

SOL Memecoins Out Of Leading Narratives

Despite leading the popularity rankings, CoinGecko highlighted that the Solana ecosystem’s mindshare had significantly decreased from the 38.79% it had dominated in 2024.

According to the study, the ecosystem dropped by 12% this year, reflecting the blockchain’s “struggles to expand beyond its close association with meme coin speculation, as well as Solana’s range-bound price despite wider institutional adoption marked by the US ETFs launch.”

This resulted in the Solana ecosystem dropping out of the top leading narratives list this year. In a Friday analysis, CoinGecko reported that memecoin emerged as the most popular crypto narrative in 2025 with a combined 25.02% of global investor interest across the main meme coin category and 35 meme coin trends.

This represented a 5.65% decline from the 30.67% market share that the memecoin narrative held in 2024, suggesting that “the mania for purely speculative crypto may be subsiding.”

The Solana ecosystem lost its spot in the top five most popular crypto narratives, where it had ranked for the previous two years, after being overtaken by AI agents and the Made in USA narratives. Meanwhile, the Solana memecoin sector also dropped out of the top five narratives after a 3.08% decline in global investor interest from 2024.

Nonetheless, “it remains to be seen whether the Solana narrative will be able to ride on new catalysts next year, as momentum from its comeback story runs out,” CoinGecko added.

As of this writing, SOL is trading at $126, a 2.61% decline in the daily timeframe.