BNB Chain is distant fourth as Solana, Tron, Ethereum lead 2025 fee generation

The BNB Chain has come in fourth position among blockchains based on the revenue fees they generated in 2025. The network associated with the world’s largest exchange, Binance, trailed Solana, which came in first. 

Notably, BNB Chain did not completely lag in other metrics, which could be comforting for network proponents and investors. 

According to data from Nansen, BNB generated $259.06 million, coming in fourth place, while Solana generated $605.66 million. Ethereum, with its barely active memecoin community, trails behind at $521.98 million, and the Tron chain remains in number 2, even though it is not so far behind Solana at $581.65 million. 

Analysts had high hopes for Bitcoin at the beginning of 2025. However, Nansen data shows it came in fifth with just $172.53 million. 

Still, while BNB Chain’s revenue, compared to others, was lower, it did not completely lose in every key metric. It did well as far as active addresses are concerned, with many reports claiming it had the highest compared to other chains. 

It also did not perform terribly on the adoption end, with its total value locked rising over 40% while transactions grew to 150% year-over-year. Its stablecoin capitalization also doubled to roughly $14 billion at its peak, with real-world assets surpassing $1.8 billion, supported by major institutional issuers like BlackRock’s BUIDL, Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, and VanEck’s VBILL.

Why did BNB Chain trail in fee generation? 

As for why BNB Chain has not performed well regarding fees, analysts have linked it to a change in trend with people leaning more toward chains that offer utilities like Tron or high volume like Solana. 

While Tron offers real-world utility as a payment rail and hosts between 50 to 60% of the global USDT supply, Solana continues to dominate with its high volume, mostly from its overactive memecoin culture. 

Tron not only offers real-world utility, but it also does so at low cost. Investors have especially taken advantage of its low fees for microtransactions, which have kept it ahead of chains like Ethereum and BNB Chain. 

BNB Chain has tried to optimize its fee generation, especially as competition between chains intensifies, with average gas prices dropping as low as 0.05 gwei. While that has helped, it has not closed the gap to Solana or Tron. 

With help from Changpeng Zhao, it even revived its memecoin culture via Four.meme in October, a meme launchpad similar to Pump.fun. 

Will 2026 be better for BNB Chain? 

In 2025, key upgrades like the Lorentz and Maxwell upgrades significantly cut block times, reduced finality, and lowered fees roughly 20 times without harming validator rewards, all achievements that the team plans to build on directly in 2026. 

For the new year, the team plans to transform the network into a highly optimized trading chain after proving it has the capacity to operate at scale with zero downtime last year, even though it lagged in some key metrics.

The team is focused on scaling the network to roughly 20,000 TPS with sub-second finality while maintaining low transaction costs. There are also plans to roll out a dual-client strategy, including Geth for stability and a new Rust-based Reth client for performance, alongside upgrades to parallel execution, storage, and database architecture to manage long-term state growth.

Sign up to Bybit and start trading with $30,050 in welcome gifts