Non-EVM Chains in the Bear Market

Key Insights

• Among the leading non-EVM chains, Solana towers over its competitors in most fundamental metrics. It has created an independent thriving ecosystem, but heated competition is on the horizon. As such, it is priced conservatively compared to its smaller peers.
• For Cardano, Algorand, and Tezos, development activity remains key. One new DeFi application has driven TVL growth for Algorand even in this bear market.
• Cardano is priced aggressively compared to its adoption metrics. The market seems to be expecting significant improvements from its upcoming upgrade.

Only once the euphoria of the bull market is behind can we separate the wheat from the chaff. The previous report in this series compared how the bear market affected activity on different EVM-compatible chains. While the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the leading execution environment, it is not the only one. This report compares the impact of the bear market on the top non-EVM chains. In order to keep the data consistent and comparable, the cut-off date is set to the same as the last report, i.e., July 13, 2022.

Platform chain success is determined by the flywheel of users and developers. A growing user base entices developer activity, and better developers create killer applications that bring more users. Unlike EVM-chains that give a consistent experience, non-EVM chains have distinct experiences. The distinctness makes it harder for them to onboard users and developers. However, once they’re onboarded, they tend to be stickier.

Ecosystem Classification