Recently, I saw a summary on Twitter about some public chains and Layer 2 expansions (excluding Ethereum) that included their past funding and current (as of July 29) revenue (see reference link for details).
This summary is arranged from the highest to lowest funding amounts as follows:
EOS: $4.2 billion; daily revenue $0;
Flow: $746 million; daily revenue $4;
zkSync: $458 million; daily revenue $270;
0G: $357 million; daily revenue $3;
Tezos: $286 million; daily revenue $29;
Somnia: $257 million; daily revenue $400;
Celestia: $156 million; daily revenue $58;
Polkadot: $145 million; daily revenue $0;
Berachain: $142 million; daily revenue $30;
Walrus: $140 million; daily revenue $325;
This set of data basically includes most (though not all) chains that have undergone large-scale financing over the past few years.
When I first saw this set of data, I thought I had read it wrong — I couldn't believe that some once well-known chains are now earning less than $500 a day, while some so-called "king chains" have now fallen to a daily income of $0.
It truly is witnessing it rise high, only to see it collapse.
The funding raised by some "king chains" back then, if compared to today, especially in the popular AI field, is a quite astonishing amount. And that was over ten years ago.
This shows that once a bubble is inflated, its lethality is quite impressive.
If one participated in those projects during the peak of the bubble and invested heavily, and if they did not exit in time to cut losses afterward, then they might have lost a lifetime in the process.
This further strengthens my belief: many so-called "opportunities," especially those opportunities that emerge in a crazy market when everyone is shouting that they cannot be missed, are likely huge pits for the vast majority of ordinary people. This is because it is very difficult for most ordinary people to distinguish which of these "opportunities" are real and which are fake. Real opportunities are often few and far between, while fake ones are everywhere. In the end, most ordinary people end up buying fake opportunities.
The above set of data lists numerous Layer 1 smart contract public chains, and if these Layer 1 chains are classified and their development histories are strung together, it essentially narrates the brief history of the development of the crypto ecosystem.
In 2017, after Ethereum's smart contracts demonstrated astonishing power in the ICO field, blockchain projects represented by EOS (launched in 2018) emerged.
They primarily attacked Ethereum's weaknesses in terms of low efficiency, slow speed, and high costs.
In that era, they were dubbed "Ethereum killers."
After the fall of the "killers," the community began to advocate "we cannot let Ethereum monopolize the ecosystem," leading to the emergence of a new generation of blockchains represented by Polkadot (launched in 2020) and COSMOS (launched in 2019).
They attempted to construct an ecosystem that breaks the monopoly and creates and connects multiple chains.
Although they built a certain ecosystem, it was soon overshadowed by the tide of DeFi and NFTs.
Alongside new narratives like DeFi and NFTs, some teams began to think: if it's difficult to recreate a complete ecosystem in the general field like Ethereum, then is there an opportunity to shine and rise in more specific fields?
Thus, eager individuals started to "dance" amidst the tides of DeFi and NFTs.
We saw the emergence of Flow (launched in 2020), a public chain attempting to build an ecosystem around NFTs and gaming. At that time, the NBA Top Shot NFT on Flow even dominated the NFT ecosystem.
Next, we saw Berachain (2025), which attempts to provide unified liquidity as a Layer 1 DeFi public chain.
To the extent that when AI began to explode, there emerged a Layer 1 blockchain called 0G (launched in 2025), which aims to be dedicated to the AI ecosystem.
No matter how charming their narratives were at the time, now looking at the revenue displayed by this set of data, these Layer 1 smart contract public chains are essentially "ghost towns."
In my view, this indicates several issues:
First, the crypto ecosystem does not need so many Layer 1 smart contract public chains.
Second, the difficulty of establishing an ecosystem for a smart contract public chain is quite high; merely having a narrative is not sufficient; an ecosystem that generates revenue must exist. If such an ecosystem cannot be established, its conclusion is basically a deadlock.
Third, although there is still no convincing unified standard for evaluating the value of a smart contract public chain, I believe that the actual revenue of the chain must be a core element of this standard. A smart contract public chain with poor revenue, no matter how charming its narrative appears, will ultimately face a deadlock. This is akin to a company with vast imaginative potential, which, if not supported by substantial performance, will see even the highest stock prices ultimately crash.
This set of data also reveals a phenomenon, and I believe this phenomenon will play out multiple times in the future:
Every new round of "narratives" will bring forth new teams attempting to create a Layer 1 public chain dedicated to that "narrative," and those public chains will receive substantial investments from venture capital due to their glamorous team backgrounds and technical capabilities.
We have had Layer 1 public chains specifically designed for DeFi;
We have had Layer 1 public chains specifically designed for NFTs;
We have had Layer 1 public chains specifically designed for AI;
In the future, we may also have:
Layer 1 public chains specifically designed for quantum computing;
Layer 1 public chains specifically designed for space;
......
Reference link:
https://x.com/top7ico/status/2082437369156825543
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