Solana (SOL) has emerged as the most popular blockchain ecosystem of 2025, securing its crown for the second consecutive year despite a significant decrease in chain-specific global interest compared to the previous year.

Solana Takes The Popularity Crown

On Monday, Solana was named the leading blockchain ecosystem by popularity in 2025 by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko. The study examined interest in blockchain ecosystems based on CoinGecko’s non-botted global web traffic from January 1 to December 14, 2025, only including ecosystems with actively listed coins and a non-zero percentage share of traffic.

As a result, a total of 62 blockchain ecosystems were included in the study. Out of the 62 blockchain ecosystems studied, the 20 most popular represented a majority of 95.60% of global interest in chain-specific narratives.

According to the report, the Solana ecosystem captured 26.79% of the global interest in chain-specific narratives this year, retaining its title as the most popular blockchain ecosystem for a second consecutive year.

The Base ecosystem followed in second place, accounting for 13.94% of global investor interest in chain-specific narratives this year, led by constructive developments and partnerships. However, its mindshare experienced a 2.9% decrease from the 16.81% recorded in 2024.

Similar to Solana and Base, the Ethereum ecosystem also retained its position from the 2024 list, ranking as the third most popular ecosystem with 13.43% of global interest. Meanwhile, Sui and BNB Chain moved up in the list, ranking 4th and 5th after more than doubling their mindshare in 2025.

Per the study, the Sui ecosystem recorded the largest mindshare growth, with a 6.9% year-over-year (YoY) increase to reach 11.77% of the total global interest in chain-specific narratives.

The BNB Chain ecosystem saw a 4.9% surge YoY to capture 9.05% in mindshare, fueled by the launch of Binance Alpha in May, which increased BNB Chain’s on-chain trading volumes, the report noted.

Notably, XRP Ledger, Bittensor & Hyperliquid lead new entrants into the top rankings, securing a spot in the top 10 this year.

SOL Memecoins Out Of Leading Narratives

Despite leading the popularity rankings, CoinGecko highlighted that the Solana ecosystem’s mindshare had significantly decreased from the 38.79% it had dominated in 2024.

According to the study, the ecosystem dropped by 12% this year, reflecting the blockchain’s “struggles to expand beyond its close association with meme coin speculation, as well as Solana’s range-bound price despite wider institutional adoption marked by the US ETFs launch.”

This resulted in the Solana ecosystem dropping out of the top leading narratives list this year. In a Friday analysis, CoinGecko reported that memecoin emerged as the most popular crypto narrative in 2025 with a combined 25.02% of global investor interest across the main meme coin category and 35 meme coin trends.

This represented a 5.65% decline from the 30.67% market share that the memecoin narrative held in 2024, suggesting that “the mania for purely speculative crypto may be subsiding.”

The Solana ecosystem lost its spot in the top five most popular crypto narratives, where it had ranked for the previous two years, after being overtaken by AI agents and the Made in USA narratives. Meanwhile, the Solana memecoin sector also dropped out of the top five narratives after a 3.08% decline in global investor interest from 2024.

Nonetheless, “it remains to be seen whether the Solana narrative will be able to ride on new catalysts next year, as momentum from its comeback story runs out,” CoinGecko added.

As of this writing, SOL is trading at $126, a 2.61% decline in the daily timeframe.

PEPE investors are at risk of losing their coins following a recent security incident. On-chain security firm Blockaid drew attention to a front-end attack on the meme coin’s website that could potentially drain users’ funds. 

PEPE Investors At Risk With Website Front-End Attack

In an X post, Blockaid stated that its system identified a front-end attack on PEPE’s website. The security firm further revealed that the site contains a code of Inferno Drainer. This malware is known to be used to automatically drain users’ wallets, which puts holders at risk of losing their coins. 

The Inferno Drainer malware is said to redirect visitors on the website to a fake portal, where they risk clicking phishing links that are designed to drain their wallets. As such, the security firm advised investors and community members to avoid the website until the issue is resolved. 

Blockaid’s Threat Intelligence Team also told Cointelegraph that the Inferno Drainer code detected on the website matched a known drainer family they regularly identify. Meanwhile, the team has yet to make a statement on their official X platform regarding the malware. 

Notably, the website on the PEPE X platform redirects to a fake website (pepedotvip) instead of the original site (pepedotcom). The website also promotes a PEPE derivative, which is believed to be a rug coin. The price remained steady amid reports of the hack, climbing as high as 4% yesterday. 

However, the meme coin price has since retraced as part of a broader crypto market correction led by Bitcoin. The third-largest meme coin by market cap is also down over 75% year-to-date (YTD) thanks to the recent crypto market crash. 

The Rise In Inferno Drainer Attacks

The PEPE front-end isn’t the first to fall victim to an Inferno Drainer attack this year. Earlier in the year, Blockaid had identified that CoinMarketCap’s frontend was compromised by what appeared to be an Inferno Drainer. Back then, the CoinMarketCap website displayed a pop-up prompting users to verify their wallets, which ultimately drained their funds. 

The BNB Chain X account was also a victim of this Inferno Drainer in October. The hackers posted links that directed users to websites that employed the Inferno Drainer toolkit. This incident resulted in a total loss of around $8,000 for users, which the BNB Chain promised to reimburse. 

Blockaid last year revealed that the Inferno Drainer group stole $80 million from Web3 users by exploiting older, malicious decentralized applications. This kind of scam is also said to have tripled last year, resulting in significant losses for investors. 

At the time of writing, the meme coin price is trading at around $0.000004697, down over 3% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.