On-chain is sluggish, applications are lacking, where will the former financing king Eclipse go?

Author: Pine Analytics

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Abstract

Eclipse Labs has raised $65 million from top investors to build a second layer (Layer-2) based on the Solana virtual machine (SVM) on Ethereum. Eclipse has received support from companies like Polychain, Placeholder, and Hack VC, positioning itself as a high-performance, cross-chain Rollup platform with ambitious architectural plans.

However, despite strong funding and a good reputation, the on-chain reality is starkly different. Activities are superficial and short-lived, mainly driven by airdrop mining rather than genuine demand. Gas fees, deposit amounts, and total locked value (TVL) have been declining. The current application ecosystem lacks a uniquely valuable product—most products are just weaker copies of others.

Due to a lack of outstanding applications and a decline in usage, Eclipse was overvalued when entering the token issuance period. Despite its network fundamentals being insufficient to support this valuation, its fully diluted valuation is expected to exceed 300 million dollars.

The possible outcome is that after a brief short squeeze, persistent selling pressure will follow, as insiders and market makers will profit from retail interest before exiting.

Unless Eclipse provides products that can only exist in its stack, the tokens will temporarily inflate the ecosystem — — then gravity will pull them back to the ground.

Raise funds

Since its establishment, Eclipse Labs has raised $65 million through multiple rounds of financing, becoming one of the most well-funded Ethereum Layer-2 projects.

Financing Round Segmentation

Pre-Seed ($6 million) - August 2022

This round of financing was led by Polychain Capital, with follow-on investments from Tribe Capital, Tabiya, Accel, and Polygon Ventures. This early-stage financing positions Eclipse as an ambitious attempt to bring Solana’s high-performance virtual machine (SVM) to Ethereum. It is estimated that the valuation for this financing is between 30 million and 40 million dollars, which is relatively common among strong infrastructure development projects at the time, such as pre-product stages.

Seed Round ($9 million) - September 2022

Led by Tribe Capital and Tabiya, with follow-on investments from CoinList, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Soma Capital, and Struck Crypto. Although Eclipse has not yet launched its official network or protocol, this round of financing has pushed Eclipse’s valuation to nine figures (post-financing valuation of $100 million to $120 million). The funds will be used to expand the engineering team and accelerate infrastructure development.

Series A financing ($50 million) - March 2024

Led jointly by Hack VC and Placeholder, with participation from investors such as Delphi Digital, Polychain (returning investors), OKX Ventures, GSR, Flow Traders, Distributed Global, Maven 11, and DBA. This round of financing aims to launch the Eclipse mainnet and build the Eclipse ecosystem. Although Eclipse’s valuation has not been officially disclosed, industry insiders estimate its valuation to be between $300 million and $500 million, which means Eclipse will become a top competitor in the Ethereum Layer-2 space.

Strategic positioning

Eclipse’s financing is not only unique in scale but also unparalleled in its promised strategic cross-border appeal:

Gain the support of Ethereum and Solana investors (such as Anatoly Yakovenko, the Solana Foundation, and researchers from the Ethereum Foundation).

A framework that combines the security of Ethereum with the execution layer of Solana and the modular data availability of Celestia.

This allows Eclipse to present itself as the future of cross-chain performance—a “the best in the world” rollup stack.

The reputation of Polychain

Polychain Capital led the seed round pre-financing of Eclipse and participated in subsequent financing - but their recent actions in other investments have raised serious warnings. In projects like Celestia, they sold off massively after the token launch, reportedly selling more than $240 million of $TIA, causing its price to plummet by 90%. The same pattern has appeared in other Polychain-supported tokens, such as Manta, Scroll, and Solayer, which have all fallen between 80% and 95% from their peak prices.

There is no reason to expect Eclipse to be any different. Polychain has always demonstrated a willingness to maximize returns, regardless of its impact on the ecosystem. Their early position in Eclipse suggests that when liquidity emerges, they are prepared to rotate out—rather than establish a long-term partnership.

On-chain activities and usage

Despite raising $65 million and positioning itself as the fastest L2 platform on Ethereum using Solana’s virtual machine, Eclipse’s on-chain activity still shows a short-lived, airdrop-driven usage pattern with almost no sustained demand. The following data visualization illustrates the rise and rapid decline in key metrics such as Gas payments, user deposits, TVL (Total Value Locked, used to measure the total value of assets locked in a DeFi protocol or blockchain ecosystem), and application attractiveness.

Network fees reveal speculation driven by airdrops.

This chart shows the total network fees paid daily by the Eclipse platform (in ETH). After the launch of Turbo Tap, an application specifically designed for airdrop mining, its activity immediately surged. The sharp decline after the Turbo Tap snapshot release further confirms the correlation between usage and reward expectations.

By June 2025, network fees had dropped to below 1 ETH per day (around $750), which reflects both a decrease in user transaction volume and the disappearance of incentive-driven behavior. This trend confirms the following view: apart from airdrop mining, there is no other natural trading demand on the network.

Chain deposits are steadily declining.

The curve of ETH and Hyperlane deposits into Eclipse is closely related to the surge in Gas usage—both experienced rapid growth from December 2024 to March 2025, driven by incentive-driven activities. Starting in the second quarter of 2025, deposit volumes began to steadily decline as users withdrew funds and potentially reallocated them to more liquid or active ecosystems.

Deposits based on Hyperlane peaked at $25 million to $27 million in the first quarter of 2025, but have since fallen below $17 million. This downward trend is also consistent among bridged assets such as USDC, SOL, and WIF (note: assets used for short-term transitions or connecting two financial operations or states). Importantly, this is not a reallocation of asset composition, but rather an outflow of funds from the entire ecosystem. As the reward incentive mechanisms gradually weaken, user participation has also declined, exposing the vulnerability and temporariness of Eclipse’s liquidity base.

The DeFi application ecosystem is small in scale, has poor liquidity, and suffers significant losses.

In the top 10 Eclipse applications, the TVL is still very low:

Only 3 applications have a TVL exceeding 2 million dollars (Orca, Astrol, Save).

Most other people’s salaries are below $500,000, with some even below $100,000.

The 1-month change column shows that almost all major protocols have experienced a significant double-digit decline (Astrol -24%, Invariant -28%, Neptune -27%).

This situation indicates that the developers have not found sticky traction, and users have not found useful or profitable reasons to stay.

Center of gravity missing

As it stands, the application ecosystem of Eclipse lacks any unique and valuable products. The existing application portfolio—DEX, lending markets, stablecoins, NFT markets—is structurally no different from the existing applications on Solana, Ethereum, or other Layer-2 solutions. In most cases, they offer fewer features, worse liquidity, and lack competitive advantages.

For blockchain to maintain long-term use and prove the legitimacy of its block space, a clear point of output is required—an application or experience that users cannot obtain elsewhere. So far, Eclipse has not achieved this.

On the contrary, the short-term activity of the network is almost entirely driven by airdrop mining. While the upcoming token issuance may temporarily spark users’ interest, it is unlikely to attract users’ attention without a core reason for retention. Token incentives can stimulate user growth momentum, but cannot replace the true product-market fit.

If there are no outstanding native applications from Eclipse, the ecosystem may quickly collapse after the TGE. Builders will leave in search of platforms with stronger liquidity. Users will turn to chains where their tokens have exit opportunities. And this network—despite having strong funding and engineering capabilities—may become irrelevant, not because of technical failures, but because there is nothing truly important within it.

If Eclipse wants to have a future, it needs to incubate or attract an application that can only be realized on its architecture—an application that leverages SVM in a way that cannot be replicated by any EVM chain. Otherwise, the token will only temporarily inflate the ecosystem, and then gravity will pull it back down to earth.

Expected Token Issuance Dynamics

Based on the status of similar projects and the Eclipse ecosystem, the most likely outcome is a valuation mismatch for the TGE. Despite the decreasing usage of the chain and the lack of sticky applications, it is expected that Eclipse’s initial public offering (FDV) will be valued higher than its recent round of private financing—possibly exceeding $300 million. This will immediately place it among the highest-valued L2 platforms, even though it lacks corresponding fundamentals.

The perpetual contract market may go live shortly after its launch, and traders will begin to short the tokens, attempting to drive their prices down to their rightful levels. In response, market makers and early supporters will squeeze these shorts, temporarily pushing prices up until the short positions are brought down to manageable levels. Once liquidity dries up, stakeholders holding unlocked or liquid tokens will start to gradually sell off, leading to sustained selling pressure and triggering a typically prolonged and severe downtrend.

This model—high issuance price, initial market short squeeze, followed by long-term issuance—is common in ecosystems that are overhyped and have low utilization. Without a natural demand catalyst or unique applications to attract attention, Eclipse’s tokens are likely to follow the same trajectory.

Final thoughts

Eclipse has already raised significant funds, built an impressive tech stack, and attracted the attention of top investors. However, none of this has translated into sustained user demand, product-market fit, or provided a reason for this blockchain to exist beyond short-term speculation.

The current reality is obvious: Eclipse has no killer applications, no sticky user base, and no unique reasons for developers or capital to stick around after the token issuance. The token issuance is likely to follow the same pattern as many previous token issuances—after a brief speculative wave, there will be sustained selling pressure due to insider rotation and a lack of natural demand.

Eclipse may still find a foothold, but this path requires more than just funding and clever architecture. It needs to provide something that only Eclipse can offer - not just technologically, but also economically and experientially. Until then, the project’s valuation will not align with its practicality, and the pricing of its tokens will be more based on narrative rather than actual usage.

In such a market, the downward pull will ultimately prevail.