Ethereum and BNB Chain Lead Crypto Wallet Race, While Polygon Shows Explosive Growth

Ethereum and BNB Chain continue to dominate the cryptocurrency landscape in terms of user adoption, measured by unique wallet addresses, according to recent data. Ethereum remains the largest ecosystem with just over 273 million addresses, but BNB Chain is closing the gap with roughly 272 million wallets. The two networks tower over the rest of the market, with a significant drop separating them from the next tier.

The data reveals intriguing trajectories: while Ethereum grew modestly at 1.5% over the past month, BNB Chain posted one of the highest expansion rates among major chains at 4.7%. This highlights BNB's aggressive user acquisition compared to Ethereum's more established, steady growth.

The race for third place is fiercely contested. Tron comfortably holds the position with 169.7 million addresses, despite a slight 0.1% decline. Solana follows with 153.7 million wallets and a 1.8% monthly increase, benefiting from rising developer activity and popularity in payments and DeFi. The Telegram-backed TON network has carved out a substantial user base exceeding 141.6 million wallets, growing 1.2%, signaling the staying power of messaging-native ecosystems.

Further down the rankings, Polygon emerges as a standout performer. Although it sits in seventh place with 120.4 million addresses, it recorded the strongest month-to-month gain among major networks at 7.4%, indicating it is benefiting from renewed scaling demand. NEAR Protocol also shows steady growth with 131.1 million users.

In contrast, Bitcoin—the original crypto network—holds a surprisingly lower address count of 74.8 million, reflecting its evolved role toward value storage rather than user-centric application deployment. Smaller chains like Aptos, Mythos, Stellar, Celo, Hedera, and newer platforms like peaq and Plasma continue expanding at smaller absolute scales, representing a slow-burning trend of niche ecosystem growth.

The rankings reveal two key market dynamics: first, the powerful network effects that keep early leaders like Ethereum and BNB far ahead; and second, that rapid growth is migrating to other platforms like Polygon, while newer chains quietly accumulate users. The crypto top tier remains stable, but the race beneath is highly competitive, with the next climbers dependent on converting hype into lasting user bases.