Ronin And Zksync’s Onchain Metrics Fell The Most In 2025

Some of last year’s hottest blockchains saw the steepest declines in onchain activity after viral moments failed to drive sustained growth.

Onchain activity declined sharply on several major networks, according to Nansen data, with 11 blockchains posting drops in active addresses in the past year.

Ronin fell the most at 70%, while Bitcoin registered a 7.2% decline. Several Ethereum layer-2 networks made the list.

Nansen data also showed drops in transaction activity across many of the same networks. ZKsync recorded one of the steepest declines, with transactions falling 90%.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s base layer recorded a 25% increase in active addresses and more than a 20% rise in transactions, even as debate continued around Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap and concerns over liquidity fragmentation across layer-2 networks.

Pixels is a popular game that migrated to Ronin from Polygon in the second half of 2023. At the time, Ronin had roughly 20,000 daily active users before Pixels’ arrival drove a sharp increase in activity, briefly making Ronin the second-most active chain by daily users.

By December 2024, Pixels registered around 300,000 daily active users, according to DappRadar. The game’s popularity has since declined, and Ronin’s onchain activity has fallen alongside it, showing the network’s reliance on hit games.

Several Ethereum layer-2 networks also experienced a decline in usage as activity tied to airdrops cooled. ZKsync’s token airdrop claim opened in June 2024. The network said nearly 700,000 wallets were eligible while fending off criticism of its Sybil filtering. Nansen data showed that more than 40% of the top airdrop wallets immediately sold their allocations. Scroll also appeared on the list following its October 2024 airdrop, after which onchain activity slowed down.

Arbitrum saw active addresses fall by 3%, though its roughly 31 million users still ranked it among the top 10 networks by activity. The Ethereum rollup conducted its airdrop in 2023, and its transaction volume rose 36% over the past year to about 734.5 million, beating Ethereum’s 507 million transactions. Arbitrum drew activity from tokenized assets, including 500 US stocks stamped on the network by Robinhood.

Related: How crypto is used in 2025: YouTube, Pokémon cards and more

Source: CoinTelegraph