Solana & Hyperliquid: The 2025 Crypto Activity Powerhouses That Left TradFi in the Dust
Forget the old guard—2025's economic engine roared to life on new rails. Two names dominated the transaction logs and liquidity pools, rewriting the playbook while Wall Street fiddled with spreadsheets.
The Speed Demon's Comeback Tour
Solana didn't just recover; it launched. Network activity didn't tick up—it exploded, processing volumes that made legacy chains look like dial-up. Developers flocked, fees stayed microscopic, and the 'network is down' meme faded into distant memory. It became the default for anyone building something that needed to actually work at scale.
The Derivatives Dark Horse
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid executed a silent takeover of the perpetual swaps arena. It bypassed the clunky order books of its predecessors, offering a trading experience so smooth it felt illicit. Volume migrated en masse, proving that in crypto, the best infrastructure doesn't ask for permission—it just wins.
Their combined surge highlights a brutal truth for traditional finance: agility beats pedigree every time. While bank consortiums were still drafting their third memo on 'digital asset strategy,' these platforms were busy settling more economic value than some small nations—all without a single middle manager in sight. The future of finance isn't being debated in boardrooms; it's being coded, traded, and validated in real-time, leaving anyone waiting for an official invite firmly behind.
Solana becomes the leading all-purpose chain
Solana even passed Base, which was always pushing for more low-cost apps and seamless on-chain activity. Base is ranked seventh, with $76.4M in annual revenues. The latest Cryptorank data show a shift in chain rankings, as legacy networks were almost forgotten. Apps switched to a new set of chains.
Even the most active Ethereum and BNB Chain fell to positions 4 and 5. Ethereum achieved $524M in yearly revenues, while BNB Chain locked in $257M. The year 2025 marked a watershed for crypto platforms, where usage shifted from novelty and hype to established products.
This also led to more predictable revenues from apps, with clear leaders emerging on the most active chains. The leading chains for 2025 also relied on app adoption, instead of only airdrop farming or incentives. Apps on Solana became key infrastructure and went beyond just novelty or point-farming hubs.
Previous leaders from the past years, including Avalanche, Filecoin, and TON, did not re-enter the top 10 of the best revenue producers. The rankings showed a shift of apps to a new selection of L1 chains and L2, for both general and specialized usage. The EdgeX chain became a part of the top 10 based on its native DEX performance. Axelar, Bittensor, and Optimism joined the top 10 based on one or two outperforming leading apps.
Hyperliquid ends its most active year
Hyperliquid ended its most active year, when it emerged as a first mover, and as a leader after the creation of several competing perpetual futures DEXs.
The DEX drew in a total of $3.87B in deposits, with over 609K new users joining the platform. Based on the DEX self-reported results, the native HyperCore chain achieved over $908M in annual revenues.
Over $848M came from the main activity in trading perpetual futures. The top 100 whales spent $5.7M on gas fees going to the protocol’s reserves. Hyperliquid became one of the platforms with predictable revenues as a result of maturing crypto markets.
Builders on the Hyperliquid ecosystem shared the revenues, with over $46M received for the past year. The platform also raised additional revenues from ticker auctions, with nearly $1M in fees for the GOD ticker.
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