Speaking of popularity, the projects you mentioned are quite familiar and not the same as the GEM term that I understand. But no matter if in the future they will be leading projects in space, I a little bit thinking about L1 being speculative like TIA, and I still feel there is no need for newness because we also have ATOM.
I have also heard about many L1, but the competition and potential of new projects must be very high to be able to gain market share in the space.
quite easy for L1 to get massive market cap honestly, just getting supported by binance labs and coinbase already putting it ahead, from my opinion, the easiest is deploying L1 project, simply because doesn't matter if we are reinventing the wheel people would still flock into it, because many people are hoping they invested into the next ethereum or anything like that.
just wait until other L1 releasing like Taiko and so on,they will definitely become hits the first time they are listed into the exchange.
just like how zeta are climbing up in price instead of getting massive dumping because its l1 and people want to repeat the same history of ethereum again and they surely want to be among the first one
to invest and then make some good profit out it.