Top 5 Blockchains No One Uses

Introduction

Crypto has a habit of turning every new blockchain into the next big thing. A new L1 or L2 launches with huge funding, faster transactions and cheaper fees, and suddenly everyone is asking whether it could challenge Ethereum or Solana.

But once the incentives fade, the airdrop hunters move on, and the chain turns into a “ghost chain.” Here's a list of five such projects that launched with all the hoopla, but couldn't manage to back it up.

Note: None of these five are technically dead. The block explorers still load, the validators keep validating, and some may even offer a few real-world use cases. It's the gap between what they raised and what's happening on-chain today that's gotten embarrassing.

#5 Monad

Monad was probably one of the most hyped L1s before it even existed. Founded by former Jump Trading engineers, the project positioned itself as a faster version of Ethereum without abandoning EVM compatibility. And investors clearly bought the story.

After years of hype by one of the biggest pre-launch communities in crypto, the expectation was not simply to become another mid-sized L1. Monad’s daily active addresses fell from a peak of around 153,000 to roughly 12,000 today, marking an approximately 92% decline. Monad has also struggled to retain the liquidity it attracted at launch, with roughly 75% of assets bridged into the network later flowing back out to other chains.

#4 Tezos

Tezos was one of the biggest blockchain stories of the 2017 ICO era, raising $232 million before its mainnet eventually launched in 2018. The peak TVL reached approximately $85M to $90M with over 50-60K active users. 

Eight years later, the technology is still being developed, but the user base is a different story. Today Tezos holds $19.41M in TVL and sees 1,366 active addresses a day, and its entire DEX ecosystem did $151 of volume in the last 24 hours, which is not shorthand for $151 million.

#3 Sonic

Sonic arrived with plenty of history behind it because it was effectively the next chapter of Fantom, one of the better-known L1s from the previous cycle. It launched in December 2024 and managed to attract more than 850,000 active addresses and $1 billion in TVL. 

That liquidity, however, did not stick. Sonic now has only about $14 million in DeFi TVL, around $500K in daily DEX volume and roughly 5,200 active addresses.

#2 Berachain

Berachain started as a running joke in an NFT Discord and somehow converted that into $142 million from Polychain, Hack VC, Brevan Howard and Samsung Next, plus the loudest party at Token2049 Singapore in 2024! Mainnet launched in February 2025 with $3.1 billion in pre-deposits while TVL peaked at $3.35 billion within weeks.

At one point, Berachain looked like one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in crypto with 1.2 million active addresses on its mainnet following the token launch. Today, it has around $49 million in TVL and roughly 3,400 active addresses, a tiny figure compared with the scale of the funding and attention it attracted.

#1 Polkadot

Polkadot was supposed to become the infrastructure layer for a multi-chain world. It raised about $145 million in its 2017 token sales and spent years building around the idea that specialized parachains could plug into a shared network while remaining interoperable. 

At its peak, Polkadot had around $1.6 billion in TVL and 514,000 daily active addresses. Today, TVL has fallen to roughly $94 million, while activity on the core network has dropped to the low thousands. Also, the network’s native token, DOT, has crashed 98.5% from its $54.98 peak to around $0.85 today.

Honorable Mentions

A few other chains came close to making the list: 

Blast, the Ethereum L2, arrived with one of the cycle’s most aggressive incentive campaigns, attracting more than $2.3 billion in deposits, but much of that early momentum has since faded.

Aptos is another interesting case: despite raising hundreds of millions and launching with strong numbers, its adoption has never quite matched the hype that surrounded it as one of the major Ethereum alternatives.

Then there's EOS, which was one of the biggest launches of the 2017 ICO boom, raising more than $4 billion. Today, it has faded so far from the crypto spotlight that many people who entered the market after 2020 have probably never even heard of it!

Disclosure: Aptos Network is an investor in Beluga.

Did we leave anyone out? Drop us a note on X and let us know which other chains you think should have made the cut. And if you are in the mood for more, take a look at our other Top 10 feature covering the best Crypto Podcasts you should tune into!