Top 15 Layer 1 chains by Total Value Locked (TVL)

Top 15 Layer 1 Chains by Total Value Locked (TVL)

As blockchain technology develops, first-level protocols introduce innovations and new features. First-level projects such as Polkadot, Solana, and Avalanche focus on maximizing scalability, compatibility, and security. These protocols are designed to create a framework on which multiple blockchains can seamlessly interact and exchange information, opening up new opportunities for developers and users.

How you can verify that the DeFi projects that you invest in are worth it and reliable? To do this, you need to find out one important indicator that is widely applicable in the entire DeFi sphere!

The Total Value Locked (TVL) indicator is an indicator that measures the sum of all assets locked in DeFi protocols on the blockchain. This includes cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and other digital assets that are frozen in smart contracts for use in decentralized financial applications. One of the TVL’s main advantages is that this indicator is especially important for DeFi platforms, where users' money is blocked and used for various financial transactions. TVL allows us to determine how successful a project is and how it can continue its development.

Let’s explore the Top 15 Layer 1 Chains by Total Value Locked (TVL) by CoinGecko in more detail!

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum TVL: $49 billion

ETH Market Cap: $371 billion

ETH Price Gains: (1Y): 47%

Launched in July 2015, Ethereum, became the first major blockchain network to gain fame after Bitcoin. If Bitcoin laid the foundation, then Ethereum has raised it to a new height thanks to the introduction of smart contracts.

Created by a team of developers led by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum is designed as a general-purpose blockchain that allows you to create any applications on its decentralized basis. Thousands of secondary tokens operate on the Ethereum blockchain, making it the most popular Layer 1 blockchain for developers.

Ethereum introduced a first-level protocol that facilitated the creation of decentralized applications (dApps) and programmable tokens using Solidity (a high-level, Turing-complete programming language, which means developers can write code substantially faster as many of the low-level concerns are abstracted away). This allowed developers to create complex applications on the blockchain, which revolutionized the cryptocurrency industry.

How does Ethereum differ from other platforms?

To build a full-fledged economy, you need a contract-signing tool and a third party trusted by both sides of the transaction. But the idea of cryptocurrency is that people don't want to rely on banks or the government.

Ethereum expands the concept of cryptocurrency to the crypto economy through smart contracts. If the main idea of Bitcoin is money independent of the state, then the main idea of Ethereum is an economic system independent of the state.

What is an Ethereum token?

Ethereum is the second most popular cryptocurrency. Ethereum, unlike real (fiat) money, is not backed by certain assets (gold, currency, etc.). Despite that fact, the value of ETH is supported by a limited number of "coins" in circulation, active investments in this cryptocurrency of fiat funds, and high interest in the possibilities of the Ethereum blockchain network.

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TRON (TRX)

TRON TVL: $6.95 million

TRON Market Cap: $13.80B

The TRON blockchain is a decentralized ecosystem of entertainment content launched in 2017 by Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. According to his plan, developers can create their entertainment applications (dApps) on the platform and directly offer them to users, bypassing intermediaries.

Initially, TRON was launched on the Ethereum blockchain, but in the summer of 2018, the cryptocurrency was transferred to its blockchain. In July 2018, the BitTorrent project, a file-sharing protocol with about 100 million monthly active users, was also integrated into the Tron ecosystem.

The TRON network completed decentralization in December 2021 and is fully managed by the DAO community. The blockchain is being developed at the expense of the Singapore non-profit organization Tron Foundation, which directs all proceeds to the further development of the project.

When creating the project, it was positioned as a new type of social network that does not depend on centralized management. Anyone can create content and share it with the community. The project also includes a platform for searching and exploring decentralized applications DappRadar and a cryptocurrency wallet.

How does TRON differ from other platforms?

The architecture of the TRON blockchain consists of three levels: storage, management, and applications. The storage layer is used to store information about blocks, and the management layer (core) contains modules for smart contracts, account management, and consensus.

The third level provides developers with the ability to create dAps in various programming languages such as Java, Scala, C++, and Python. The technical features of the TRON blockchain make it possible to use any high-level language for smart contracts, which makes this network one of the leading platforms for creating applications.

This blockchain has a high degree of scalability, which opens up a lot of opportunities for developers to deploy their applications while being used by millions of people. TRON has better bandwidth than the Ethereum or Bitcoin networks, and a reward distribution mechanism that makes consensus more decentralized and increases network security.

The TRON blockchain also has a Sun Network sidechain project. Its goal is to help applications run with less power consumption, faster speeds, and enhanced security. At the same time, the sidechain provides unlimited data storage capabilities for the main TRON network. Sun Network is fully compatible with the core protocol and uses all its key functionality.

What is a TRX token?

TRONIX (TRX) is the network's own token, the main unit of account in the TRON blockchain. TRX is used to pay transaction fees, as well as rewards for staking and block confirmation. The TRX cryptocurrency can be used for payments and purchases, including in many online services and using prepaid plastic cards.

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Solana (SOL)

Solana TVL: $3.46 billion

SOL Market Cap: $61 billion

SOL Price Gains (1Y): 464%

Solana is a blockchain that focuses on fast speeds and high throughput. The network was launched in March 2020 and began to gain popularity dramatically in 2021. Solana uses the new Proof of History (PoH) algorithm, which complements PoS and allows blocks to be formed in 0.4 seconds.

Due to the low latency, the network quickly gained popularity, as users could access a wide range of dApps, for the most part, equivalent to applications in Ethereum, but without high fees and a long wait for confirmations.

How does Solana differ from other platforms?

This Layer 1 blockchain offers a great alternative to Ethereum, especially when it comes to speed, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. One of the key technologies of the Solana blockchain is the use of the Proof-of-History blockchain synchronization algorithm. It allows for optimization of the time to confirm the operation and is used together with the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.

In turn, PoH is used in the Tower BFT system, which reduces the cost of computing resources. Another feature of Solana is the Turbine transaction transfer protocol, which allows for increased scalability of the blockchain. It is possible to reduce delays thanks to the Gulf Stream protocol, and the Sealevel system makes it possible to process transactions in parallel.

What is a SOL token?

The SOL token is a native utility token of the Solana network, which is burned when paying commissions. Holders of SOL tokens can become validators of the network. The coin runs on the SPL protocol, it is a standard similar to ERC-20 in the Ethereum blockchain. The main uses of the SOL token are payment of transaction fees, network usage or smart contracts, as well as staking.

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BNB Smart Chain (BNB)

BNB Chain TVL: $5.2 billion

BNB Market Cap: $82 billion

BNB Price Gains (1Y): 64%

BNB is a Layer 1 blockchain that is supported by Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It's needed to settle transaction fees on the BNB chain and offers a 25% discount on Binance commissions.

How does BNB Smart Chain differ from other platforms?

Launched in August 2020, BSC gained popularity in 2021 due to the launch of several DeFi projects on the blockchain with the possibility of mining liquidity.

To finalize blocks and transactions, BSC uses a hybrid consensus mechanism, which is a mixture of Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Authority. Validators in the network are selected based on the size of their share in the stack. The first 21 users with the most BNB stakes are eligible to receive the commission incomes on the network.

What is a BNB token?

The network's native asset (BNB) is also the currency of the Binance Chain, a separate blockchain previously launched by the Binance team. BNB holders get the opportunity to trade on Binance with a reduced commission. Binance also regularly buys and burns BNB in proportion to trading volumes on the exchange.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, accounts for a quarter of the total volume of crypto trading. As an initiator and key participant in the BSC ecosystem, Binance plays a major role in shaping the circulating BNB offering. Every quarter, the exchange announces the burning of BNB tokens, which are withdrawn from circulation.

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Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin TVL: $1.1 billion

BTC Market Cap: $1.2 trillion

BTC Price Gains (1Y): 108%

Bitcoin remains the best Layer 1 project. The Bitcoin blockchain is a database consisting of transactions protected by encryption and verified by network participants. The blockchain is not stored in any one place, it is distributed among several computers and systems on the network. These systems are called nodes. Each node has a copy of the blockchain, and each copy is updated whenever confirmed changes are made to the blockchain.

The blockchain consists of blocks that store data about transactions, previous blocks, addresses, and the code that executes transactions and launches the blockchain. This is the classic definition of blockchain as a technology that we are all used to. It's just that all this was the basis of Bitcoin as the first blockchain. It was created by a possibly non-existent person named Satoshi Nakamoto, who set such a technical description.

How does Bitcoin differ from other platforms?

It is more suitable here than other blockchains that differ from Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is the first, it is essentially an original blockchain and is self-sufficient. All the new ones that appeared afterward pursued the goal of either improving the work of the blockchain or becoming an exact copy of it.

What is a BTC token?

Bitcoin is the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. BTC is considered a native token of the Bitcoin blockchain and does not comply with any third-party standards. The BTC token gives access to the capabilities of the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin has a limited supply of just 21 million tokens, making it ideal as a store of value.

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Sui (SUI)

Sui TVL: $557 million

SUI Market Cap: $1.54 billion

SUI Price Gains (1Y): -73%

Sui is the first permissionless Layer-1 (L1) proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain built from the ground up, allowing creators and developers to create capabilities that serve the next billion Web3 users.

How does Sui differ from other platforms?

The developers of the Sui blockchain are Mysten Labs, whose founders previously worked in Meta on the never-launched Diem project and the Move programming language. The latter formed the basis of the Sui network, which began operation in May 2023. At the start, the throughput of the blockchain reached 300 thousand transactions per second.

What is an SUI token?

SUI is a native coin of the Sui blockchain running on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm. This network is characterized by high performance, its key feature is the ability to conduct parallel transactions. This ensures high throughput of the blockchain, which is a great advantage when working with decentralized applications that are demanding on the speed of operations.

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Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche TVL: $1.5 billion

AVAX Market Cap: $13.4 billion

AVAX Price Gains (1Y): 83%

Avalanche is a Layer-1 blockchain network claiming to achieve infinite scalability as it offers almost instant transaction confirmations. Avalanche aims to provide a scalable blockchain solution while maintaining decentralization and security, focusing on reducing network costs, high transaction speeds, and environmental friendliness. Avalanche operates based on its native AVAX coin and a multiple consensus algorithm.

How does Avalanche differ from other platforms?

Launched in 2020 by Ava Labs, Avalanche is a blockchain platform supporting smart contracts. With Avalanche, users can create an unlimited number of customizable and interoperable blockchains.

The two main problems that Avalanche solves are:

Congestion. Avalanche was intentionally designed with scalability in mind. Along with high-speed payment systems such as VISA or MasterCard, transactions in Avalanche are processed in less than a second. The blockchain is capable of processing up to 6500 TPS. This is much better compared to the same Ethereum.
Commissions. Avalanche is better and cheaper than Ethereum in terms of network fees. The network commission charged for any action and transactions in the blockchain, stacking, etc. is burned (as in Ethereum), permanently reducing the amount of AVAX in the blockchain.

Avalanche claims to be "the fastest smart contract platform" and solves these problems by using three separate blockchains:

X-Chain - used for asset management. It is based on the Avalanche consensus protocol.
C-Chain - used to create smart contracts. It is based on the Snowman Consensus protocol.
P-Chain - used to coordinate network validators. It is based on the Snowman Consensus protocol.

The Avalanche consensus protocol randomly verifies transaction confirmations by validators, forcing all nodes to work in parallel with each other. The idea is that doing random checks multiple times increases the likelihood that the transaction is true/valid. The Snowman consensus protocol works in much the same way but writes blocks in a linear order.

What is an AVAX token?

The native AVAX coin is a utility token. AVAX serves as a medium of exchange in the Avalanche ecosystem. In other words, AVAX is used as an internal currency internally, usually to charge transaction fees, rewards, and many other uses. AVAX is also used for stacking, which ensures network security.

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Aptos (APT)

Aptos TVL: $342 million

APT Market Cap: $3.8 billion

APT Price Gains (1Y): -27%

Aptos is a new first-level blockchain developed with the aim of mass adoption of Web 3.0 and expanding the capabilities of the ecosystem of decentralized applications. The main feature of this network is the use of Parallel Execution technology, which increases the throughput of the blockchain and increases the speed of operations.

How does Aptos differ from other platforms?

The Aptos blockchain uses the Move programming language to perform transactions quickly and securely. The smart contract verifier, written in this language, allows application developers on this blockchain to better protect their programs from malicious objects, according to the technical documentation of the project.

In addition, Aptos offers hybrid key storage and management options. According to the developers, together with the transparency of transactions before they are carried out and practical client protocols, this creates a more secure and reliable user interface.

What is an APT token?

The native token of the Aptos project is the cryptocurrency of the same name with the ticker APT. APT is a native token of the Aptos blockchain and plays an important role in ensuring transaction and network fees within the framework of the platform.

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The Open Network (TON)

The Open Network TVL: $145 million

TON Market Cap: $21.9 billion

TON Price Gains (1Y): 169%

TON is a fully decentralized first-level blockchain developed by Telegram to attract billions of users. It boasts ultra-fast transactions, tiny fees, easy-to-use applications, and eco-friendliness.

How does TON differ from other platforms?

Since 2020, the technology has been developing thanks to a non-profit group of supporters and an independent community of enthusiasts who called themselves the TON Foundation. The mission of the developers is to create a full-fledged ecosystem with centralized storage, decentralized services, a domain name system (similar to DNS), an anonymous network, an instant payment platform, and affordable/fast transaction processing.

What is a TON token?

TON coin, formerly known as Gram, is the native cryptocurrency of the TON network. The initial idea was to integrate TON into an easy-to-use application that allows users to buy/send/store funds. Customers pay a transaction fee and use TON to settle or confirm transactions. TON coin uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model for network scalability and reliability. According to the project's website, the platform provides its customers with fast, transparent, and secure payment services, facilitating transactions with minimal fees and third-party applications.

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Cronos (CRO)

Cronos (CRO) TVL: $2.45 million

Cronos (CRO) Market Cap: $2.08B

Cronos is an Ethereum-compatible blockchain and cryptocurrency project. Cronos offers users the ability to support a variety of applications, including decentralized finance (DeFi), the metaverse, and games. Cronos offers high scalability and low fees, which makes it an attractive option for users and developers.

How does Cronos differ from other platforms?

Cronos was created in 2021 by the company Crypto.com - one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and Cronos is the company's way to expand its cryptocurrency ecosystem. Since Cronos is compatible with Ethereum, existing applications on the Ethereum network can be easily migrated to Cronos. This will help Cronos grow quickly and be accepted by users and developers. Cronos is based on a new blockchain architecture. This makes it faster and more scalable than Ethereum.

What is a CRO token?

Cryptocurrency CRO is a virtual coin presented by an online platform Crypto.com. It combines a number of services: a bank card, an application, an exchange, a wallet, etc. It was created to introduce blockchain technology into various spheres of life and popularize virtual coins to the level of fiat money. It has a number of features: decentralization, no commissions, and wide functionality. To avoid confusion, you need to know that Crypto.com there are two tokens - MCO and CRO. The first one was considered the main one until the appearance of the second altcoin in 2018.

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Near Protocol (NEAR)

NEAR TVL: $576.05 million

NEAR Market Cap: $5.69B

NEAR Protocol is a first–level blockchain created in 2020. The NEAR blockchain is, in simple words, a platform using technologies familiar to us that are found in many other blockchains. At the same time, they have features that make NEAR a unique platform.

How does NEAR Protocol differ from other platforms?

The first unique feature is Nightshade. This is a variation of sharding, thanks to which the network is divided into segments, and each of them is responsible only for a certain part of transactions, which increases the throughput of the blockchain. The trick of NEAR is the generation of a part of the next block, or chunk, by shards.

The second is Doomslug. This is a variation of the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, which involves alternately forming blocks instead of competing for the right to generate them. The technology provides almost instant completion of the block.

The third is Rainbow Bridge. This is an application for moving various interchangeable and non-interchangeable tokens (NFT) between the Ethereum and NEAR networks.

The fourth is Aurora. It is a second-layer protocol that supports EVM-compatible smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).

Fifth, access to a wide audience. NEAR has simplified registration and human-readable account addresses instead of cryptographic ones, which makes the protocol understandable even for people without specific knowledge about the blockchain.

Sixth– modular components that facilitate the rapid development of projects.

What is a NEAR token?

The NEAR token has several functions – blockchain management, participation in staking, and payment of transaction fees. The maximum coin offer is 1 billion. There are now just over 862 million tokens in circulation, or 86%.

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Cardano (ADA)

Cardano (ADA) TVL: $300.096 million

Cardano (ADA) Market Cap: $12.79B

Cardano is a cryptocurrency released on a blockchain created from scratch, running on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm, designed for the development of smart contracts, as well as the creation of full-fledged decentralized dApps applications. Among the goals of the project: increasing network scalability, compatibility, and sustainability for the effective operation of dApps.

How does Cardano differ from other platforms?

Representatives of the project claim that it adheres to the principles of openness and transparency. All research and technical specifications related to Cardano are publicly available.

The creators of the project also claim that they are guided by a scientific approach when developing the network. In particular, the team has published over 90 documents describing Cardano technologies. It is claimed that unlike blockchains of previous generations (the first is Bitcoin, the second is Ethereum, and the third is Cardano), the system will not suffer from scalability problems and is ready for mass use.

The creators of the Cardano project developed a unique Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism called Ouroboros was created. It has classic security systems, as well as rewards within the framework of stacking. The system processes transaction blocks using a settlement delay mechanism. Cardano developers also claim that Ouroboros distinguishes network participants and stimulates only honest users.

What is ADA token?

Cardano (ADA) is the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain. The main function of ADA is transfers in the Cardano blockchain.

The native Cardano cryptocurrency is traded under the ADA ticker. This is an abbreviation of the name of Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852). The daughter of the poet George Byron, Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and the author of the description of the first computer, for which she compiled the world's first program. She is considered the first programmer in history. The ADA cryptocurrency subunit (0.000001 ADA) is called Lovelace.

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Sei (SEI)

Sei TVL: $27 million

SEI Market Cap: $1.37 billion

SEI Price Gains (1Y): 6,000%

SEI is a first–level, open-source blockchain that can offer an infrastructure for trading applications of all types. DEX, NFT marketplaces, gaming DEX and other trading applications will work better on it than on other platforms.

How does SEI differ from other platforms?

SEI has established itself as the fastest first-level blockchain platform on the market thanks to the Twin Turbo consensus. It consists of two parts: intelligent block propagation and an optimistic roll-up protocol that increases network efficiency by combining multiple transactions. Both components aim to safely reduce the time needed to reach a consensus. The current rate is 12.5 thousand transactions per second.

The Sei Labs team believes that DEX cannot scale with the existing first-tier infrastructure because they lack the bandwidth and time to trade. SEI is designed to solve the scalability problem of DEX and become a more efficient choice for exchanges looking for an infrastructure that meets their trading needs.

SEI offers a built-in order matching mechanism in L1, allowing Exchange applications created on the site to scale more efficiently.

What is a SEI token?

SEI is a cryptocurrency based on the Sei Network blockchain, which is a fast first–level project designed for trading digital assets in various fields. SEI was launched on August 16, 2023. The volume of token trading has already exceeded $1 billion. Over 120 projects are being developed in the ecosystem. The company aims to create a new blockchain platform for trading and DeFi applications. Currently, SEI coins are traded on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, MEXC, and Gate.io.

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Kava (KAVA)

Kava TVL: $193 million

KAVA Market Cap: $704 million

KAVA Price Gains (1Y): -30%

Kava is a first-level blockchain network designed to eliminate the scalability and compatibility issues of decentralized applications (dApps) such as Uniswap, Aave, OpenSea, and many others.

How does KAVA differ from other platforms?

Kava is a kind of "cross-chain hub" for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, which provides simple application integration with the most well-known digital assets. The project was founded by the Kava Labs team in 2018, but the blockchain network itself was launched only in November 2019.

The Kava blockchain is based on a co-chain architecture based on the technologies of two networks at once — Ethereum and Cosmos. On the one hand, Cosmos provides compatibility with dozens of networks in its ecosystem, and Ethereum, on the other, with a development environment compatible with its virtual machine (EVM).

The Kava network is based on the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and uses the Tendermint engine from Cosmos, based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), a fault-tolerant algorithm that allows transactions to be completed even if some of the network nodes are down or trying to commit malicious actions. To complete a block, it is enough that at least ⅔ validators agree with its authenticity.

According to the authors of the Kava project, the goal of this approach is to allow developers to create decentralized applications without worrying about problems with scalability and compatibility with other networks and protocols.

The Kava protocol has a fairly developed ecosystem, which includes more than 130 decentralized applications, including the Curve and WAGMI DEX exchanges, the Stargate cross-chain bridge, the yield aggregator called Beefy, and many others less well-known. The project team has also developed its own DeFi protocols for operations with crypto assets - this is another distinctive feature of Kava.

What is a KAVA token?

KAVA is the main native token of the ecosystem. Initially, KAVA was released on the Binance Chain blockchain in 2019 based on the BEP-2 standard. The launch of the token was supported by such well-known players in the crypto industry as Binance, Ripple, and Cosmos. After launching their main network in November 2019, KAVA tokens migrated to their blockchain.

The token has no issue limit: this means that their number will not stop growing until the developers change the protocol algorithm. The target inflation of KAVA tokens is about 7% per annum.

KAVA is a utility token and can be used for many different operations:

stacking rewards,
payment of network commissions,
payments to liquidity providers,
providing collateral for obtaining a loan or issuing a USDX stablecoin, and so on.

KAVA is traded on many major exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, ByBit, Bitfinex, Bitget, Coinone, HTX and others.

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Celo (CELO)

CELO TVL: $142.579 million

CELO Market Cap: $434.90B

Celo is a Layer-1 payment blockchain platform for mobile devices that allows you to transfer and receive cryptocurrency by phone number. Using phone numbers as public keys, Celo hopes to introduce billions of smartphone owners to blockchain technology and stablecoins.

How does CELO differ from other platforms?

Celo is positioned as a permissionless, carbon-negative Layer-1 blockchain with a diverse ecosystem of global partners developing new Web3 applications to promote a more equitable financial system. The project is a founder of the ReFi direction (Regenerative Finance). Regenerative finance employs the utilization of monetary resources as a tool to address systemic issues and regenerate communities as well as natural habitats.

As part of the partnership with Uniswap v3, green asset pools (based on tokenized carbon credits) were launched on the Celo blockchain.

What is a CELO token?

CELO token is used as a bid to protect the network (required by a validator), and payment of transaction fees allows users to vote on network management issues. The monthly distribution of CELO coins will continue until 2050 until the maximum issue of 1 billion is reached.

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Conclusion

The protocols of the first level of the blockchain represent the basis of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The achievements of Layer 1 have led to the creation of scalable and multifunctional blockchain networks that allow the creation of decentralized applications, smart contracts, and innovative financial solutions. As the crypto industry develops, Layer-1 will play a key role in shaping its future.

TVL clearly shows the cost of deposits and people's interest in a particular protocol or blockchain network. In addition, TVL allows to evaluation of the general state of a particular protocol. If more funds are stored in it, it means that it has higher liquidity, and it can work more efficiently. Since in decentralized finance, the liquidity providers are the users themselves, this is extremely important for the stability of the market. The lack of liquidity leads to significant delays and increased fees when exchanging tokens.