Inside the Layer 1 (L1) sector, 25 October 2026
The Layer 1 sector tracked 118 constituents as of 25 October 2026, with the two largest members accounting for roughly 81% of total sector market capitalisation.
Sector Concentration
As of 25 October 2026, the Layer 1 sector carried a total market capitalisation of approximately $2.34 trillion across 118 tracked constituents. Bitcoin alone represented roughly $1.62 trillion, or about 69% of that total. Adding Ethereum's $285.6 billion brings the two-asset share to approximately 81%, leaving the remaining 116 constituents to account for the final fifth of sector value. Among the 15 largest members shown, BNB ($97.4 billion), XRP ($82.2 billion), and Solana ($59.6 billion) form a secondary tier, while members from TRON downward each represent less than 1.5% of total sector capitalisation individually. Concentration of this magnitude means sector-level figures are driven almost entirely by the behaviour of its two or three largest constituents.
Fee Streams: Present and Absent
Of the 15 members listed, 14 carry a reported annualised fee figure derived from the trailing 30 days to 25 October 2026. Monero is the sole constituent in this list for which no fee figure is available, recorded as null. Fee magnitudes vary considerably even among members with measurable streams: Canton's annualised figure of approximately $594 million and Solana's $315.6 million stand at one end, while Bitcoin Cash's $26,110 and XRP's $24 stand at the other — a range of more than seven orders of magnitude across constituents grouped under the same sector label.
Distance from All-Time Highs
The spread of drawdowns from each constituent's all-time high is wide. Among the 15 members, TRON sits closest to its peak at -23.7% (trailing 7-day return period referenced separately), while Cardano and Bitcoin Cash are furthest at -93.4% and -92.8% respectively. Several mid-tier members — Stellar, NEAR Protocol, and Litecoin — sit between -78% and -87% from their respective highs. Bitcoin's figure of -36.2% and Ethereum's -52.7% illustrate that the two dominant members occupy a different part of that distribution from many smaller constituents. These figures describe historical distance only; they carry no implication about future direction.
What the Sector Label Does and Does Not Convey
The designation Layer 1 groups assets that each operate a base-layer blockchain protocol, distinguishing them from scaling layers, application tokens, or infrastructure middleware. That technical criterion is meaningful but narrow. It does not imply comparable consensus mechanisms, fee market designs, governance structures, throughput characteristics, or user bases. A constituent with annualised fees of $24 and one with fees of $594 million share a sector label while exhibiting fundamentally different economic activity profiles. Similarly, assets ranging from -22.6% to -93.4% below their all-time highs suggest highly heterogeneous historical price paths. Readers should treat the sector classification as a starting taxonomy rather than evidence of homogeneity across the 118 tracked constituents.