2024 Layer-1 Ecosystem Review Worth Following: From Solana to ZetaChain

Why is Layer-1 still popular?

When it comes to the infrastructure of the crypto world, many people are discussing how fast and cheap Layer-2 is, but don't forget - all Layer-2s ultimately have to settle back on Layer-1. So Layer-1 is the “main highway” where transactions that determine the security and outcome of the entire ecosystem run.

The core value of these underlying public chains can be summarized in four words: security, decentralization, independent consensus. Unlike Layer-2, which relies on the mainnet, Layer-1 is independent, has its own verification mechanism (PoW or PoS), and can operate autonomously.

Who is Leading? The Data Speaks

Solana (SOL) | TVL $1.65 billion | Market Cap $41 billion | Annual Growth 306%

The recent operation of SOL is indeed impressive. The Proof of History consensus mechanism has made it one of the fastest public chains currently, with TPS skyrocketing to thousands. Earlier this year, it fell out of the top five, but now it has forcefully bounced back, with the ecosystem thriving from memecoins to DeFi and the NFT market. Jupiter has positioned itself as the “trading hub” of the Solana version as a DEX aggregator, while staking protocols like Marinade are also doing well.

Avalanche (AVAX) | TVL $781 million | Market Cap $12 billion | Annual Increase 69%

The unique feature of AVAX is sub-second finality (blocks produced in less than 2 seconds), which is unparalleled in Layer-1. In 2023, the C-Chain set a single-day transaction record of 3.07 million transactions, especially during the Inscription craze, where weekly transaction fees soared to 13.8 million dollars. What does this indicate? It indicates that when the market heats up, the chain's performance really reaches its peak.

Kaspa (KAS) | Market Cap $2.4 Billion | Annual Increase 1400%

This is the biggest dark horse of 2023. Switching from GoLang to Rust, upgrading from GHOSTDAG to Dag Knight, the number of transactions processed per second is becoming increasingly outrageous. The KAS price has multiplied 14 times in a year, and the key is that these technological upgrades are not just talk - they are genuinely speeding things up.

Bitcoin (BTC) | TVL $302 million | Market Cap $841 billion | Annual Growth 86%

The status of BTC is unshakeable, but interestingly, the Ordinals Protocol emerged in 2023—allowing NFTs to be inscribed directly on Bitcoin. This breaks the curse of “BTC can only be transferred” and gives rise to inscribed assets like ORDI and SATS. While some complain about network congestion, it indeed broadens the utility boundaries of BTC.

Ethereum (ETH) | TVL $35 billion | Market Cap $283 billion | Annual Growth 3%

The Big Brother's position is stable, with over 3000 DApps showcasing their abilities in the ecosystem. But to be honest, ETH itself hasn't had much of a breakthrough this year—most of the focus has been on refining the Layer-2 rollups solution, outsourcing the work of reducing fees and increasing speed to Arbitrum and Optimism.

New forces are rising

Sui (SUI) | TVL $488 million | Market Cap $1.8 billion | Annual Drop 65%

Although the price is underwhelming, Sui's technical framework is worth a look—Move language + parallel execution capability, with daily transactions once reaching 65.8 million. The emergence of zkLogin is also an innovation, allowing users to log in to dApps using Web2 social accounts, reducing the user threshold.

Aptos (APT) | TVL $171 million | Market Cap $2.9 billion | Yearly Drop 45%

The Move language has sibling languages that also speed up execution through parallel processing. There is a lot of ecosystem financing (over $400 million), but the actual ecosystem activity has not kept pace with the financing enthusiasm—this is a common problem for many new public chains.

Sei (SEI) | TVL $10.44 million | Market Cap $1.4 billion | Yearly Increase 7283%

Pure trading chain positioning, with a built-in DEX engine and native order book. Although the TVL is not high, the optimization ideas for traders are clear. If the trading ecosystem develops smoothly, this chain has quite a bit of potential.

ZetaChain (ZETA) | Market Cap: $278 million | Annual Growth: 117%

Want to achieve “cross-chain unification” - claiming to be able to interface with any public chain, regardless of whether it is EVM or another architecture. This idea is bold enough, but the difficulty of implementation is also considerable.

Several Trends Worth Noting

1. Multi-chain ecosystems are no longer a fantasy — Cosmos's IBC, Polkadot's parachain, ZetaChain's omnichain, cross-chain dialogue is really happening.

2. Performance ceiling broken — The TPS of KAS, Sui, and Solana has all surpassed traditional bottlenecks, indicating that the technical solutions are indeed evolving.

3. Application ecosystem differentiation accelerates — This is no longer the era of “universal public chains”; specialized chains like Sei (DeFi chain) are thriving instead.

4. Fee Model Redesign — From fixed rates to dynamic rates, and then to the burn mechanism of certain chains, Layer-1 is exploring sustainable economic models.

Investment Logic

Don't just look at price fluctuations. What you should focus on is: ecological activity, number of developers, real trading volume, speed of technological iteration. The biggest lesson of 2023 is that - more funding does not equal a better ecosystem, and TVL does not equal real user demand.

Now is the best time to filter the public chains that truly have product-market fit.