Analyst firm Onchain Nansen named Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Tron and NEAR Protocol as the most stressed blockchains in 2025.
Solana led pack with 23.01 billion transactions, while BNB Chain with 3.89 billion. Coinbase’s Layer 2 Ethereum base handled 3.29 billion in third place, while Tron was in second place with 3.22 billion and NEAR was in fifth place with 1.89 billion.
Even though 2025 was characterized by institutional adoption, retail-oriented employ cases continued to dominate transaction volumes, especially on low-fee, high-throughput blockchains.
Solana’s boom on DEX and the memecoin craze
Solana’s dominance was driven by a trading boom that pushed it to the top of decentralized exchange (DEX) rankings in early 2025.
CoinGecko reported that Solana DEX trading dominated 40% of the industry’s market share, recording $293.7 billion in the first quarter of 2025. This was partly due to the memecoin craze surrounding celebrity and political tokens such as $TRUMP, a Solana-based token launched on January 18 and associated with US President Donald Trump.
DefiLlama data showed that Solana remained among the top networks in terms of DEX volume throughout the year, including monthly volumes around or above the level of USD 100 billion.
Related: Solana enters 2026 with a last-minute augment in RWA dynamics
According to Nansen, the BNB Chain network’s approximately 3.89 billion transactions coincided with the rise of its own memecoin scene.
The base ranks third in transaction volume in 2025 because it uses direct distribution from Coinbase’s user base. 2026 forecast by researcher Messari, AJC he said that Base’s protocol revenue increased approximately 30-fold in 2025, capturing 62% of total L2 revenue. The same study noted that the Base ecosystem currently includes DEXs, AI-connected applications, and forecasting platforms.
Related: Developer Base’s coin experiment faces resistance following the launch of Nick Shirley
Tron and NEAR round out the top five
Tron’s 3.22 billion transactions reflect its role as the backbone of the stablecoin economy. In June 2025, TRON DAO reported that over half of circulating USD (USDT) is issued on its blockchain. The supply of stablecoins has increased by approximately 40% since the beginning of the year, with daily transfer volumes reaching tens of billions of dollars.
According to Nansen’s ranking, the top five was closed by the NEAR protocol with 1.89 billion transactions in 2025.
NEAR informed Fr 46 million users in May, placing it alongside Solana and Tron in activity metrics. Beyond the numbers, a key part of NEAR’s 2025 story was its role in the privacy narrative via Zcash (ZEC), whose comeback was driven in part by the integration of Electric Coin Company’s Zashi wallet with NEAR’s Intents system. This allowed users to enter and exit the protected ZEC pool without having to go through centralized exchanges.
This integration helped drive protected Zcash deliveries to a record high and resulted in a surge in activity within NEAR Intents, including a day when Zcash-related volume exceeded $17 million.
