The 5 busiest blockchains of 2025 and what powered their growth

On-chain analytics agency Nansen ranked Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Tron, and NEAR Protocol because the busiest blockchains in 2025.

Solana took the lead with 23.01 billion transactions, adopted by BNB Chain with 3.89 billion transactions. Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 base took third place with 3.29 billion processed, adopted by Tron with 3.22 billion and NEAR in fifth place with 1.89 billion.

Regardless of vital institutional adoption in 2025, retail-focused use circumstances continued to dominate transaction volumes, particularly for low-fee and high-throughput blockchains.

High 5 blockchains by exercise in 2025. supply: Nansen

Solana’s DEX growth and meme coin craze

Solana’s dominance comes on the again of a buying and selling growth that propelled it to the highest of the decentralized trade (DEX) rankings in early 2025.

Based on a report by CoinGecko, Solana DEX buying and selling recorded $293.7 billion within the first quarter of 2025, dominating 40% of the business’s market share. This was pushed partially by the meme coin frenzy surrounding celeb and political tokens like $TRUMP, a Solana-based token launched on January 18 in reference to US President Donald Trump.

Based on DefiLlama knowledge, Solana has maintained its place as the highest chain in DEX buying and selling quantity all year long, with month-to-month buying and selling quantity exceeding roughly $100 billion.

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Nansen mentioned BNB Chain’s roughly 3.89 billion transactions coincided with the rise of the corporate’s meme coin scene.

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BSC leads blockchain community | Supply: cointelegraph

Base ranked third in variety of transactions in 2025 as a result of it leveraged direct distribution from Coinbase’s consumer base. A 2026 outlook by Messari researcher AJC mentioned Base’s protocol income will develop roughly 30 instances in 2025, capturing 62% of whole L2 income. The identical research discovered that Base’s ecosystem extends to DEXs, AI-linked apps, and predictive platforms.

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Tron and NEAR rank within the prime 5

Tron’s 3.22 billion transactions mirror its position because the spine of the stablecoin financial system. In June 2025, TRON DAO introduced that greater than half of the USDt (USDT) in circulation is issued on the blockchain. Its stablecoin provide has elevated by about 40% for the reason that starting of the 12 months, with each day switch quantity reaching tens of billions of {dollars}.

The NEAR protocol rounds out the highest 5, with 1.89 billion transactions in 2025, in line with Nansen’s rating.

NEAR reported roughly 46 million customers in Might and ranked alongside Solana and Tron within the exercise metric. Past the numbers, a key a part of NEAR’s 2025 story was its position within the privateness story by way of Zcash (ZEC). The resurgence of Zcash (ZEC) was partially pushed by Electrical Coin Firm’s Zashi pockets built-in with NEAR’s Intents system. This enables customers to enter and exit ZEC’s shielded pool with out going via a central trade.

This integration resulted in Zcash’s shielded provide reaching document ranges and a spike in NEAR intent exercise, together with a day when Zcash-related transaction worth exceeded $17 million.