What Key Metrics for Onchain Activity Say About SOL, ETH and Other Chains in 2025

Web3 is drowning in metrics, most of which paint a bleak picture. Transaction volumes, token prices, and flashy headlines often obscure what really matters: the quality of user engagement and the potential for organic, exponential growth. As the industry moves beyond the hype, reliable, data-driven indicators of success are no longer optional — they’re essential.

Here’s the good news: tools exist to cut through the noise. By combining multiple on-chain metrics into a single “health index” score that indicates the depth and quality of overall user interaction, we can identify which chains are truly thriving and ready for long-term growth. As 2024 draws to a close, let’s find out what these signals show about today’s leading chains, and what we can expect in 2025.

Assessing user quality using aggregated, not disaggregated, data

When building a sustainable on-chain ecosystem, it doesn’t make sense to optimize any single user action. What’s needed is context — a way to quantify not just everything users do, but how and why it matters. A reliable strategy to achieve this is to group user behaviors into five main categories:

• Transaction Activityfrom spot trades to smart contract interactions.
• Token Collection in the medium-to-long-term, and other “investment” behaviors.
• Engagement with DeFi for activities such as staking, lending and providing liquidity.
• NFT activity such as mining, trading, and utility-driven interactions.
• Participation in Management to quantify DAO or protocol governance contributions.

Importantly, these metrics should not be treated equally. A better approach is to weight and combine them using a Bayesian model to produce a single top-line “score.” Unlike traditional scoring systems that rely on static thresholds or simple averages, it lets us incorporate prior knowledge (what we expect from an “average” wallet) and new evidence (actual activity which is followed in the chain). These dynamic and multi-variate scores are harder to game and therefore less likely to reveal accurate and actionable insights.

What the data tells us about 2024

The above approach provides new insight into each chain’s user activity through 2024. Let’s zoom in on some of the more surprising findings.

Solana (the top light blue line reaching ~2.75) gained a large share of high-quality users between February and mid-March, but engagement quality has fallen since then. Interestingly, this drop coincided with SOL’s first price and trading volume increase in 2024, and continued the current memecoin mania. Repetitive actions have diminishing returns when assessed using a Bayesian model, meaning that multiple token swaps will yield a smaller score improvement than interacting with multiple activity types, for any specific wallet. This suggests that most Solana users are currently engaged in a narrow range of on-chain activities that do not contribute to Solana’s multi-sector growth.

As for Ethereum supporters (the lower orange line that starts just above 1) who expect this year’s ETH ETFs to be a game-changer, the numbers paint a different picture. Ethereum’s low and stable user score through H1 2024 suggests that this year’s bullish development has not spurred broader ecosystem participation such as DeFi activity and protocol governance.

It’s also worth noting that Axelar (the dark blue lines starting at 2.5) has the most active users in the widest range of on-chain activities relative to its total user base, according to the data. While Axelar is currently smaller by TVL than the legacy chains dominating today’s headlines, this is an intriguing signal that warrants closer scrutiny — and would have been missed if we just looked at market cap or volume. of trade.

The takeaway here is that Solana is not doomed and that Axelar will inevitably become the world’s largest chain. There is limited value in comparing these types of scores across chains, as each score is proportional to the user quality of its corresponding chain. In other words, a Solana user with a score of “4” may be very different from a “4” on Axelar, due to differences in the baseline activity of each chain. As such, these scores are most useful when tracking changes in the quality of a chain’s overall user activity over time, not cross-chain comparisons.

Predictions for 2025

With that said, what does each user chain’s quality track record tell us about the year ahead?

For starters, Solana clearly faces significant challenges and opportunities entering 2025. The chain’s trajectory depends on its ability to maintain its massive user base and expand their range of on-chain interactions. Failure to do so could result in a significant crash once memecoins cool down — although data from early 2024 suggests the chain has a large contingent of quality users that will endure no matter what happens to short term.

2024 demonstrated Axelar’s ability to attract a concentrated user base that engages in diverse, ongoing on-chain activity, rather than speculative surges. Now, Axelar’s challenge is to grow its ecosystem without diminishing the quality of its user base. This could include prioritizing high-profile partnerships to unlock new audiences while creating more newbie-friendly onramps across its dApp ecosystem.

The fragmentation of Ethereum has moved many active users to its faster, cheaper L2 ecosystem, and thus we may see mainnet activity gradually consolidate into core protocol staking and governance features. These activities are critical for the broader EVM ecosystem, but this trajectory can be penalized by scoring systems that reward diverse on-chain engagement.

This dynamic highlights a challenge for scoring systems: prioritizing broad user activity may present an incomplete picture when applied to task-specific networks (or general-purpose chains evolving into something more specialized). As a result, it is important to clearly define what success means for any chain being evaluated and use a scoring system that captures corresponding user actions.

A better way to define, and drive, on-chain growth

Web3 spent too much time chasing the wrong metrics and failing to look at the data holistically. In 2025, the winners will be those who find multivariate ways to measure — and act on — what matters most: user quality.

By incorporating new scoring methods into their dashboards, the on-chain intelligence platform can provide more meaningful insights to investors and industry observers. At the same time, Web3 developers can use these scores to clarify top priorities and drive user engagement and value creation. Ultimately, this will help the entire industry shift from hype-driven narratives to data-backed strategies that unlock the full potential of Web3 in 2025 and beyond.