The Evolution of the Public Chain Competitive Landscape: From Technical Competition to Product Implementation

Looking back at the bull market of the cryptocurrency market in 2021, applications such as DeFi, NFT, and GameFi developed rapidly, and issues like network congestion and high Gas fees on the Ethereum network provided opportunities for a new generation of public chains. Projects like Solana, a certain trading platform chain, Polkadot, Avalanche, and FTM emerged in droves, attempting to challenge Ethereum's dominance.

These emerging public chains are competing not only on the technical level but also in attracting developers, building communities, and gaining capital support, leading to the so-called "public chain battle." Although the advantages of each chain fluctuate in the short term, this competition has greatly promoted the advancement of blockchain technology, made the crypto ecosystem more diverse, and laid the foundation for the rise of new public chains like Aptos and Sui.

However, four years later, the intensity of the public chain competition seems to have faded. Aside from Solana rising from its low point to become the new leader of public chains, other projects have performed relatively flat. Although there is still a gap in market capitalization between Solana and Ethereum, the market seems to have higher expectations for it.

By comparing the market capitalization and current status of several popular public chains from back in the day, it can be seen that Solana and a certain trading platform's chain have performed relatively strongly, while other public chains, including Ethereum, are still striving to catch up.

Recently, the founder of a certain trading platform hinted that the platform's public chain will undergo significant changes and innovations in 2025, attempting to challenge Solana's brilliant performance over the past year. At the same time, emerging public chains like Sui and Bera are also striving to catch up.

However, the market's expectations for public chains are no longer limited to performance improvements, but rather whether they can provide truly usable application products. Unfortunately, apart from stablecoins and a few DeFi applications, there have not yet been any truly market-demanding innovative products on various public chains. Even the once-popular AI Agent projects have fallen into difficulties.

Nowadays, the competition among public chains has shifted from mere marketing and reward competition to a battle of refining actual products. While MEME can be considered a form of product, it is not a long-term solution. On-chain PvP games will eventually become tiresome, and in the end, it will still return to the users ( community ) and the product itself.

Looking back at the public chain competition in 2021, we may not be able to replicate the grandeur of that summer. However, we can expect a situation similar to the "Battle of the Hundred Groups" in the internet industry, where ultimately it will be a competition of users, operations, and practical applications. Considering that L2 can also be viewed as a form of public chain, future competition may be even more intense than anticipated.

From an investment perspective, certain selection logic of public chains is still applicable. For example, Solana is developing a MEME ecosystem, and other chains can follow suit; SUI focuses on gaming, and other chains can also try. The market is still large enough, and fields that can create wealth effects will attract users. Only in this way is it possible to incubate truly viable products. This is because the market follows the logic of having prices before products, and this trend will not change in the short term, after all, the "summer" of the crypto industry has yet to arrive.