May 2024 Public Chain Research Report Regulatory Adjustments and Market Trends

Author: [email protected]
Source: Public Chain Research Page
In May, the cryptocurrency market experienced significant regulatory and political developments. The approval of the preliminary application for a spot Ethereum ETF by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) boosted the market performance of Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions. The Trump campaign team announced that they would accept cryptocurrency donations, indicating a potential impact on the market from the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Solana is being adopted by more mainstream platforms like PayPal, continuing its strong growth trajectory. TON attracted significant attention due to Pantera Capital’s “largest investment to date” and the increasing on-chain TVL and activity.
The data in this report is sourced from the Public Chain Research page of Footprint Analytics. This page provides an easy-to-use dashboard containing key statistics and metrics in the public chain space, continuously updated in real-time.
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
In May 2024, market dynamics were significantly influenced by major regulatory progress, with the SEC approving the preliminary application for a spot Ethereum ETF. This milestone event not only helped Ethereum stand out in the broader cryptocurrency market but also signaled a shift in regulatory support for cryptocurrencies.
Additionally, the political situation also had an impact on market sentiment. The Trump campaign team announced they would accept cryptocurrency donations, suggesting that the upcoming U.S. presidential election could have a profound impact on the cryptocurrency market, potentially comparable to adjustments in Federal Reserve monetary policy.
Conversely, the ongoing resolution of the Mt. Gox exchange bankruptcy case had a certain degree of dampening effect on Bitcoin prices. The exchange, which has been in bankruptcy for a decade, announced in September last year that creditor repayments would begin in October 2024, raising concerns in the market about the potential impact of a large token sale.
Public Chain Overview
As of the end of May, the total market value of public chain cryptocurrencies had increased by 10.5% from April, reaching $19 trillion. Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana led in market share, with 62.9%, 21.4%, 4.1%, and 3.6% respectively. It is worth noting that Ethereum’s market share increased from 19.7% to 21.4%, while Solana rose from 3.1% to 3.6%.
In May 2024, Bitcoin rebounded strongly from its low point at the end of April, rising from $60,653 at the beginning of the month to $67,606 by the end of the month, a 11.5% increase. Similarly, Ethereum showed a strong recovery trend, with its price increasing from $3,011 to $3,778 during the same period, a significant 25.5% rise.
Driven by broader trends in the cryptocurrency market, public chain cryptocurrencies recovered from their lackluster performance in April. In addition to Bitcoin and Ethereum, Solana’s market value grew by 34.5%, NEAR by 19.0%, and Avalanche by 14.8%.
Toncoin’s price increased by 23.0%, but its market value decreased by 14.6%. This was due to an update on May 30 by The Open Network (TON) regarding the circulating supply of Toncoin on the data aggregator, excluding a portion held by Telegram, TON Foundation, and TON Believers Fund. This update immediately led to a decline in Toncoin’s market value.
By the end of May, the overall TVL of public chains had reached $872 billion, a 14.7% increase from April. Ethereum, Tron, and BNB Chain led the way. Particularly notable was TON’s TVL which surged by 106.4% in just one month.
Solana continued its upward trend in May, benefiting from ongoing meme coin popularity and significant developments. LayerZero integrated Solana into its cross-chain network, connecting with seven chains: Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Optimism, and Base, with plans to expand to over 70 blockchains. Additionally, PayPal chose Solana to expand its stablecoin PayPal USD (PYUSD), marking the company’s first foray into public chains beyond the Ethereum ecosystem.
TON also attracted significant attention. In early May, Pantera Capital, managing over $5 billion in assets, announced the “largest investment to date” in TON. Additionally, Telegram’s game robot projects like Tapswap and Hamster Kombat gained traction in the Notcoin frenzy, attracting more users to TON and driving an increase in on-chain activity.
Development of Major Layer 1 Public Chains in May 2024
Bitcoin
Belred IBIT broke records as the fastest asset to reach $200 billion in an ETF.
Animoca Brands announced its entry into the Bitcoin space through the OPAL Protocol.
Ethereum
Bloomberg analysts predicted that the demand for a spot Ethereum ETF could reach 20% to 25% of the demand for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Vitalik Buterin and other core Ethereum developers proposed the EIP-7702 upgrade.
BNB Chain
BNB Chain announced four hard forks on the opBNB test network, reducing gas costs on opBNB by 10x.
BNB Chain launched a new trading volume incentive program.
NEAR
NEAR: The mainnet shard count has increased from 4 to 6, further enhancing network performance.
NEAR announced the launch of a new research lab, NEAR AI.
Sui
Sui denied allegations related to manipulating token supply.
Sui’s social login tool zkLogin added multisig recovery functionality and support for logging in with Apple accounts.
Polygon
PolygonLabs announced the use of SP1 to create pessimistic proofs for AggLayer.
Core Chain
The “Summer Game Contest 2024” organized by Core DAO began on May 20.
GalaChain
An unknown hacker attacked Gala Games’ internal control account, minting 5 billion new GALA tokens on May 20. The Gala Games team quickly discovered the attack and used their blacklist feature to isolate the attacker’s address.
Layer 2
In May, the approval of the preliminary application for a spot Ethereum ETF by the SEC boosted the performance of Ethereum Layer 2. Arbitrum led the market with a 44.8% market share and a 19.6% TVL growth. Optimism followed closely with a 22.2% market share and a 13.1% TVL growth. Blast’s TVL grew by 22.3%, while Base increased by 27.2%.
Driven by its DeFi activity Linea Surge, Linea’s TVL surged by 82.9%, attracting more DeFi enthusiasts and significantly increasing TVL on the network. Manta Pacific’s TVL increased by 17.4% due to the successful launch of the new product Manta CeDeFi, which offers rewards from both CeFi and DeFi income.
Development of Major Layer 2 Public Chains in May 2024
Arbitrum
Uniswap: Arbitrum became the first Layer 2 to surpass $150 billion in total trading volume on a DEX.
Injective plans to launch its own Layer 3 network inEVM based on Arbitrum Orbit.
Optimism
The Optimism team welcomed Layer 3 to join the Superchain, building on the OP Stack and sharing revenue with the Optimism Collective.
Starknet
StarkWare announced the launch of ZKThreads, an extension framework based on ZK execution shards.
Blast
Blur launched Blast, offering Blast Points and 2 million GOLD rewards.
Taiko
Taiko went live on the mainnet on May 27.
Rootstock
Rootstock founder: Bitcoin’s programmability could emerge within 12 months.
Merlin Chain
Merlin Chain announced that all assets of Merlin’s Seal can be unstaked.
Blockchain Games
In May, a total of 1,525 games remained active across multiple blockchain platforms, with BNB Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum holding 23.3%, 19.7%, and 15.7% market share respectively.
Among the 3.3 million daily active users in May, Ronin, Polygon, and NEAR continued to lead, similar to the previous month. Ronin maintained its dominance with around 29.0% market share. NEAR’s share increased from 12.1% at the beginning of May to 14.8% by the end of the month. Flow also showed growth, with its share rising from 0.7% to 3.3%. However, BNB Chain’s share declined from 8.0% to 5.9%.
On May 24, the Arbitrum community initiated a vote on the 2 billion ARB Game Catalyst Plan, which aims to strengthen the gaming ecosystem on the network. The vote will end on June 8 and has garnered majority support, with a high approval rate of 80.6%. Meanwhile, Arbitrum is developing a Layer 3 gaming-specific chain ecosystem, and the multi-chain NFT game ecosystem Polychain Monsters announced the launch of a Layer 3 gaming-specific chain based on Arbitrum Orbit through Altlayer.
Starknet Foundation granted 2 million STRK in funding to the metaverse game Realms.World, part of its strategy to enhance the Starknet gaming ecosystem by distributing 50 million STRK tokens announced in March.
The classic soccer game “Captai