Distributed research for distributed networks — OurNetwork is crypto's go-to platform for onchain analytics.

PYUSD, USDT, USDC, eUSD & USD3

• Since the last OurNetwork issue on stablecoins one quarter ago, the number of addresses holding stablecoins has accelerated well past 100M, to a staggering 107M, from a base of 95M, a gain of 13%. The total stablecoin market cap has also grown over the period, though not as quick as holding addresses. Stablecoins add up to $166.3B, up from $162B, a gain of 2.5%. Active addresses, while not having made a new all-time high on a monthly basis, continue to hold steady. Two out of the top three months with the highest number of active addresses has occurred in the past quarter, with May posting a high of over 21M addresses.

• The MiCA regulatory framework went into effect on the last day of June, placing significant restrictions on the issuers of stablecoins, which they called "E-money tokens", along with exchanges that list them. Many of the latter serving European customers have since delisted non-compliant stablecoins, most notably Tether's USDT. It has been speculated that MiCA will be a boon for EUR-denominated stablecoins as there are significantly less restrictions on them compared to the currently dominant USD-denominated ones. However this effect is yet to be seen, with the market cap of Euro stablecoins increasing only modestly since MiCA has gone into effect.

• While the market cap of the entire market only gained 2.5%, some select stablecoins posted exceptional gains on an individual basis. Ethena's USDe (not pictured) gained over $1B of market cap, to a total of $3.4B. Among the other top gainers were newcomer USD0, which went from 0 to $170M, PYUSD, which tripled market cap to almost $600M, mostly on Solana, and Aave's GHO, which doubled to nearly 100M.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This transaction is the first large mint of AUSD, a newly-launched stablecoin pegged to the dollar, backed by a portfolio of cash and cash-equivalents managed by the traditional financial firm VanEck. AUSD is issued by Agora, a startup that was recently backed by high-profile investors including Dragonfly and Galaxy. They aim to break the duopoly held by Tether and Circle by offering partners a significant share of the interest generated by the reserves backing their stablecoin. Agora sees significant opportunity in the (very significant) margins generated by Tether, which now hovers at over $1B per month.

• Paypal launched its stablecoin PYUSD on Aug. 8 2023, with the help of partner Paxos. Since then, circulating supply has steadily increased. PYUSD was initially introduced on Ethereum and then expanded to Solana one month ago. The total supply on all chains now exceeds $598 M. However Paypal's stablecoin has still a long way to go and PYUSD only accounts for a small percentage of all stablecoins volume.

• Since its introduction on ETH, PYUSD's transaction volume is up only. Even though July isn't finished, PYUSD also hit an all-time high of $1B on Solana for this month. Although competitors record much higher volumes, PYUSD does not seem to be lagging behind in the race.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: On June 20, a transfer of 30M PYUSD on the Solana blockchain accounted for 86% of the total volume that day. According to a source on Twitter, the address involved in this transaction might be linked to the market maker Wintermute. Indeed, this address has previously funded some stake accounts that interacted with few Wintermute addresses. Additionally, this address was also responsible for a one-time transfer of 115,000 SOL in the past. This suggests that PYUSD is getting notable institutional attention.

• USDC has had a stong 2024, with circulating supply just over $33B, up over 35% YTD. USDC is now supported on 16 different chains, with 4 chains having over $1B in circulating supply. While Ethereum consists of the majority of the supply ($25.3B), both Solana ($2.19B) and Base ($2.96)B have had significant increases in circulating supply this past year.

• USDC plays a key role in the DeFi ecosystem, with 5 of the top holders of USDC being DeFi applications. Blue chip applications such as Uniswap, dYdX and Aave all utilize USDC quite heavily as a stable asset.

• The Circle cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) has also grown quite significantly YTD. The CCTP is "a permissionless on-chain utility that facilitates USDC transfers securely between blockchains via native burning and minting." Since the start of the year, compared to non-canonical bridges, CCTP has stolen market share, from 19% to 40%+ of bridged volume.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This $100M USDC mint on Base was the largest mint of the year. USDC circulating supply on Base has more than 10xed in the past year, as Base's popularity increases and demand for stablecoins across the world also continues.

• USDT is the biggest-volume ERC20 token in Ethereum, and its daily volume, $31.5B, is greater than the rest of the top 20 ERC tokens combined.

• On TRON, the leading blockchain in terms of daily volume and unique holders for USDT, transactions on the tranche of $1 to $10k are dramatically on the rise year-on-year, suggesting continued real world adoption for P2P and B2B payments.

• Tether USDT's smart contract has consumed the third most gas on Ethereum in the last 30 days. More than 909 ETH, worth over $3M as of July 23, have been burned as a consequence of USDt transactions.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: 58.6% of all USDT-Tron is held outside of the top 500 accounts, showing increasing widespread distribution of USDt.

• TRON is a universally accessible and highly useful blockchain in our increasingly complex world. Among the notable stablecoins on TRON, USDT stands out. In 2024 alone, the TRON-based USDT supply increased by $11B, making TRON the first blockchain to have a single stablecoin valued at over $60B. As of July 2024, the network's total transfer volume has surpassed $13T, with the total number of accounts reaching 245M.

• P2P transactions are the foundation of decentralization, enabling individuals to securely and efficiently exchange value directly, irrespective of geographical boundaries. TRON continues to lead in this metric, consistently achieving two to three times the P2P transfer volume of Ethereum.

• While TRON excels in supporting both large and small transactions, most TRC-20 USDT holders are retail users, with 52.6M holding balances under $1k. Nearly a third of USDT TXs are less than $100, and 15% are less than $10.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: In 2024, the circulating supply of TRON-based USDT grew by $11B, a 23% increase, reflecting rising demand. Most recently, Orbital, a blockchain-based payments provider, highlighted the importance of USDT payments on TRON in emerging markets. The company processes millions of transactions annually, with 98% on the TRON blockchain and 99% in Tether’s USDT token. A scalable blockchain has the potential to evolve into a global settlement layer for mainstream financial transactions, and significant progress is already underway.

• The Reserve protocol is a free, permissionless platform to build, deploy, and govern asset-backed currencies (“RTokens"). RTokens typically feature a basket of yield-bearing assets and overcollateralization via the Reserve Rights (RSR) token. Through 2024, Reserve's TVL has risen from ~$40M to ~$240M (~600%), including $212.1M in RToken backing and $24.1M in RSR overcollateralization. Around 1/4 of RToken market cap comes from stablecoin RTokens, such as USD3 ($32.4M) and eUSD ($22.3M).

• Different RTokens target different risk/reward appetites. Web 3 Dollar (USD3) prioritizes holder rewards, accruing 85% of yield to RToken holders. Over the last year, supply has grown from just over $1k to over $32M, while RSR staking has grown from <$1k to ~$2.4M.

• Electronic Dollar (eUSD) prioritizes stability and widespread integration, incentivizing RSR staking with 94% of yield and, soon, sharing yield with fintech apps that integrate it. eUSD helps DeFi power consumer fintech apps in the US and Latin America by sharing DeFi yield with app users.