Onchain analytics firm Nansen ranked Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Tron and NEAR Protocol as the busiest blockchains in 2025.
Solana led the pack with 23.01 billion transactions, while BNB Chain followed with 3.89 billion. Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 Base handled 3.29 billion for third place, while Tron lagged behind with 3.22 billion and NEAR came in fifth with 1.89 billion.
Even as 2025 was marked by institutional adoption, retail-focused use cases continued to dominate transaction volumes, especially on low-fee, high-throughput blockchains.
Top five blockchains by activity in 2025. Source: Nansen
Solana’s DEX boom and memecoin craze
Solana’s dominance emerged from a trading boom that pushed it to the top of the decentralized exchange rankings (DEX) in early 2025.
CoinGecko reported that Solana DEX trading dominated 40% of the industry market share by trading at $293.7 billion in the first quarter of 2025. This was driven in part by a memecoin frenzy surrounding celebrities and political tokens such as $TRUMP, a Solana-based token launched on January 18 and tied to US President Donald Trump.
Data from DefiLlama showed that Solana remained among the top chains in terms of DEX volume throughout the year, with monthly volumes at or above $100 billion.
Related: Solana heads into 2026 with a last-minute boost in RWA momentum
BNB Chain’s roughly 3.89 billion transactions coincided with the rise of its own memecoin scene, according to Nansen.
BSC Leads Blockchain Networks | Source: Muntelegraaf
Base ranked third in terms of number of transactions in 2025 as it leveraged direct distribution from Coinbase’s user base. A 2026 outlook from Messari researcher AJC shows that Base’s protocol revenue will grow about 30x by 2025, accounting for 62% of total L2 revenue. The same study found that Base’s ecosystem now includes DEXs, AI-connected apps and prediction platforms.
Related: Base’s coin experiment encounters resistance after Nick Shirley’s launch
Tron and NEAR complete the top 5
Tron’s 3.22 billion transactions reflected its role as the backbone for the stablecoin economy. In June 2025, TRON DAO said that more than half of the circulating USDt (USDT) will be issued on its blockchain. The supply of stablecoins grew by around 40% this year, with daily transfer volumes reaching tens of billions of dollars.
NEAR Protocol rounded out the top five, with 1.89 billion transactions in 2025, according to Nansen’s rankings.
NEAR reported about 46 million users in May, ranking it alongside Solana and Tron in activity metrics. Beyond numbers, a key part of NEAR’s story in 2025 was its role in the privacy story through Zcash (ZEC), whose comeback was driven in part by the integration of the Electric Coin Company’s Zashi wallet with NEAR’s Intents system. It allowed users to move in and out of ZEC’s ring-fenced pool without using centralized exchanges.
This integration helped drive Zcash’s ringfenced offerings to record levels and drove a spike in activity on NEAR Intents, including a day with more than $17 million in Zcash-related volume.