Among the hardest hit was Solana, the once celebrated “Ethereum killer,” which had prided itself on speed and low transaction costs. By December of 2022, Solana’s price had fallen 95% from its peak.
To critics, this was not just a market correction but confirmation of deeper weaknesses: multiple network outages, dependence on a few venture backers and proximity to the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried empire.
And yet, the Solana blockchain never really died, despite its coin’s nosediving value. Developers kept building through the rubble, quietly shipping code. Three years later, Solana isn’t just alive but is being included by the Trump administration in conversations about a national U.S. crypto reserve.
This Lazarus-like return isn’t unique.
Algorand, Cardano, BNB Chain and other so-called “zombie blockchains” that once looked destined for the graveyard are suddenly reappearing with renewed relevance. They are no longer framed merely as speculative “coins” but as infrastructure: rails for tokenization, settlement and application development.
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And in an industry notorious for boom-and-bust cycles, the reanimation of these networks says less about crypto market price charts and more about how the role of blockchain networks themselves are evolving in the broader economy.
See also: Big Banks Pile Into Stablecoin Infrastructure as Wall Street Eyes Crypto Custody
From Money-Killer Pipe Dreams to Financial Middleware
When blockchain first captured mainstream attention in the late 2010s, the narrative was dominated by “coins as money.”
Bitcoin was digital gold. Ethereum was programmable money. Alternative networks promised faster, cheaper transactions that might make crypto viable as daily currency. But that framing ran into limits: regulatory scrutiny, volatile pricing, and the simple fact that most people already had payment systems that worked well enough.
Today, the conversation has shifted. Blockchains are being reinterpreted not as currency replacements but as middleware: infrastructure for applications that need secure, transparent and tamper-resistant data.
This reframing opens the door for networks once dismissed as “ghost chains” to play roles beyond speculative mania. Their value is no longer tied purely to how high their token prices go, but to the robustness of their ecosystems and their ability to host real-world use cases.
If the first wave of blockchain adoption was about speculation and the second about DeFi and NFTs, the next may be about tokenization: the process of turning traditional assets into blockchain-based digital tokens. Tokenized bonds, real estate, and commodities could reshape capital markets.
In this context, zombie chains aren’t necessarily disadvantaged. Their survival has given them credibility; their existing infrastructure and developer bases allow them to compete for pilots and partnerships. The blockchain race is no longer just about speed or decentralization; it’s about who can provide reliable rails for trillion-dollar markets.
Read more: Stablecoin Sandwiches? Here’s What CFOs Need to Know About Crypto Jargon
Why the Resurrection? Unpacking the Forces at Work
Solana’s arc exemplifies this transformation. After its brutal fall, many assumed developer migration would hollow it out. Instead, the network retained one of the most active GitHub communities in the blockchain sector. By 2024, Solana was hosting stablecoin experiments, new consumer-facing apps, and decentralized exchanges boasting speed that rivaled centralized players.
Algorand was another network tagged as a zombie. Founded by MIT cryptography pioneer Silvio Micali, it was pitched as a high-performance, mathematically elegant blockchain. But by 2022, its market relevance seemed limited; its token price languished, and its community appeared overshadowed by trendier platforms.
But today, Algorand is being positioned not as a mass-retail chain for speculative investors but as an institutional-grade solution for tokenization and compliance-heavy applications. Its “dead chain” years may have simply been incubation for the role it is now playing.
Perhaps the strangest comeback belongs to BNB Chain, originally launched as Binance’s in-house network for faster and cheaper trading. When U.S. regulators cracked down on Binance in 2023, many assumed the chain would collapse alongside its parent exchange.
Instead, BNB Chain has remained one of the most used blockchains globally by transaction volume, powering gaming economies, decentralized apps, and low-fee token transfers. Its fate is still intertwined with Binance’s legal and regulatory trajectory, but its technical ecosystem has developed enough momentum to stand on its own.
Perhaps the clearest sign that “zombie blockchains” are being resurrected lies in who is using them. The U.S. government, traditionally skeptical of crypto, has increasingly turned to blockchain networks for pilots in asset tokenization and financial market modernization, citing tokens such as bitcoin, ethereum, the XRP token from Ripple Labs, the SOL token from the Solana blockchain and the ADA token from the Cardano blockchain.
This institutionalization is reshaping the perception of old networks. What once seemed like failures of consumer adoption may prove to be stepping stones toward enterprise-grade applications. Only the future will tell.
