2025 was the year L1s stopped shipping narratives and started shipping results.
$ETH :
Fusaka activated PeerDAS to remove data availability bottlenecks, ZK-EVMs reached real-time production proving, stablecoin transfers crossed $8T quarterly ATH, Pectra improved scalability and staking efficiency, Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF paid first on-chain rewards.
$BNB :
Grayscale filed for a BNB ETF, Binance crossed 300M users with dominant institutional volume, Lorentz and Maxwell upgrades cut fees ~98% and block times to 0.75s, opBNB and Greenfield expanded execution and data availability layers.
$SOL :
Spot Solana ETF filing by Morgan Stanley, $1.6T spot volume processed in 2025, Firedancer client shipped for reliability and throughput, stablecoin supply reached $15B ATH with JupUSD launch, 3.23M daily active users secured #2 L1 usage position.
$TRX:
$7.9T in USDT transfers settled, repeated $1.4B daily stablecoin inflow spikes, integrations with Base and Kalshi expanded real-world settlement use, 355M+ users handling over 60% of global stablecoin volume.
$SEI:
Sei Giga introduced a multi-proposer EVM with 400ms finality and 200k+ TPS targets, SIP-3 passed to simplify and harden core architecture, major institutional integrations secured via BlackRock BUIDL and Apollo ACRED, PYUSD and USDY launched to advance payments and tokenized treasuries.
$ADA:
Google Cloud operated a Cardano node for Midnight privacy testing, added to Nasdaq Crypto Index, Leios scalability upgrade pushed toward Hydra-level throughput, Chang hard fork delivered full on-chain governance.
$BCH:
Coinbase enabled 24/7 BCH trading, CashTokens unlocked native NFTs and DeFi primitives, protocol upgrades improved scalability while preserving low fees, steady growth in peer-to-peer payment adoption.
$XMR:
Captured privacy-coin dominance amid Zcash leadership exit, rising institutional interest in privacy assets, protocol upgrades strengthened full-chain privacy and fungibility, transaction volumes hit record levels during regulatory shifts.
$SUI:
Launched privacy transactions via Mysten Labs tech, Remora upgrade targeted 100k TPS, shipped a native trustless Ethereum bridge, SuiNS and Move tooling accelerated developer adoption.
