📝 Editor's Note:

Digital assets have not been immune to the fear gripping global markets as the U.S. proposed tariffs last week — the overall crypto market cap is down 6.3% in the past week, according to CoinGecko. Many individual tokens are down double digit percentage points in that time frame.

Despite this, overall usage remains solid, according to the analysis below from OurNetwork contributors, Peter, the Top Ledger team, and Yasmin. As traders and investors grapple with shifting economic conditions, let's dig into the onchain latest for four of crypto's most impactful Layer 1s.

– ON Editorial Team

Ronin | Solana | Polygon | Avalanche

• In February 2025, Ronin — a gaming-focused blockchain — went permissionless, enabling developers to deploy games, DeFi protocols, and other dapps without needing approval from the Sky Mavis team, the blockchain's original creators. In just 1.5 months, contract deployments surged by 77%, developer participation grew by 29%, and the rate of new developers joining rose by 64%. This momentum led to 1,733 contracts deployed by 275 developers — and more importantly, a broader range of consumer apps for Ronin’s ~500k daily users beyond games.

• Liquid RON (LRON) is a tokenized version of staked RON, unlocking further use cases for staked RON like DeFi apps. So far, 1,164 users have staked 4.59M RON, worth roughly $3.3M at the time of writing. Of those stakers, 40% fully converted to LRON, 10% are first-time stakers, and 50% hold a mix of staked RON and LRON.

• Forgotten Runiverse is a pixel-art fantasy game with a vast open world, player-driven economy, and engaging gameplay. It has generated over $153k in primary sales through events and package purchases, and players have spent 55.85k RON on secondary market items.

• Solana is a mainstay for stablecoins. USDT, USDT, PYUSD, USDY, USDS, FDUSD & AUSD are some of the most popular U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins in the market. As of Mar. 26, Solana's supply of these stablecoins exceeds $12.5B.

• Transferring to centralized exchanges (CEXs) is generally considered a predicate to trading activity which then translates to price volatility. Transfers from CEXs are generally considered an activity to park a given token which translates to reduced trade and thereby volatility. For Solana, Binance is the CEX of choice for stablecoin transfers.

• The chart below tracks monthly burn and minting activity for stablecoins. Observe that January 2025 was a breakthrough month with double the minting activity compared to burning.

• Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS), an Ethereum scaling solution powering breakout apps like Polymarket, has seen a surge in stablecoin activity. Its USDC supply soared 118% from 458M in February 2024 to 982M today. The 30-day average transfer volume surged 12x to $3.44B, 11x more than a year ago. Notably, for every $1 of USDC on Polygon PoS, a striking $3 is being utilized — this reflects a money velocity of 3.53, higher than the U.S. economy’s 1.3 as of Q4 2024.

• Polygon PoS reached 2.61M active sending addresses in March, overtaking Solana — the long-time #1 — with 44% more activity. A year ago, it ranked third with just 832k addresses, trailing Solana by 58%. That’s a 3x year-over-year surge.

• USDC transactions on Polygon PoS fell from April to June 2024, then rebounded in July, up over 20%, and August, up over 7%. Activity held steady through March 2025, reaching 5.35M transactions—reflecting consistent, organic usage under the adjusted methodology.

• Avalanche, a top 10 L1 by market cap, experienced robust growth in Q1 2025, driven by its December upgrade. Average daily transactions surged by 38% to 354,691, totaling approximately 32M for the quarter. This momentum was consistent, with monthly volumes increasing steadily from ~9.8M in January to ~11.7M in March, showcasing sustained network activity and increased user engagement following the recent enhancements.

• Network efficiency improved dramatically in Q1 2025. Average transaction fees dropped to a low range of $0.15-$0.30. This represents a significant 75% cost reduction compared to Q4 2024, making interactions much more affordable for users.

• Decentralized exchange volume on Avalanche surged in Q1 2025, reaching $13.8B total across the chain's top six pairs. Daily volume averaged $119.2M, peaking at $510M on Jan. 19. AVAX-USDC dominated trading with $2.7B, a 25% share for the quarter, followed by AVAX-USDT and BTC.b-USDC pairs.