Solana stablecoin supply dip led by $1.8B USDC outflow

Solana’s USDC caught a boost after being paired with the TRUMP memecoin

article-image

ddRender/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Solana’s real economic value, app revenue, and DEX volumes were all up on the order of 20-30% in May, but one noteworthy figure didn’t keep pace: stablecoin supply.

Today, there are 15% fewer stablecoins on Solana than a month ago, per Blockworks Research data. Stablecoins are often an important source of liquidity for doing things like swapping in and out of SOL, although Solana’s stablecoin dip comes after the gray swan that was Donald Trump’s memecoin.

Solana’s stablecoin supply doubled essentially overnight when Donald Trump’s memecoin was paired with USDC, meaning investors essentially had to buy TRUMP with Circle’s stablecoin. Interestingly, the fresh stablecoin supply didn’t evaporate when TRUMP investors flocked for the exits, and it even hit a fresh all-time high in April when the presidential memecoin was far from its initial highs.

So given that context, some in Solana find the decline in stablecoin supply unconcerning.

Source: Blockworks Research

“[Y]ea this chart looks a lot better than the SOL price chart lol,” Lulo co-founder Jesse Brauner said when I asked him about the stablecoin supply dip.

In any event, the stablecoin exodus has been led by USDC, which saw its market cap on Solana shrink by some $1.8 billion in May, according to Blockworks Research analyst Carlos Gonzalez Campo. Perena founder Anna Yuan speculated that the sudden drop in supply could be funds shorting the dollar in a topsy-turvy macro environment.

Non-USDC stables actually grew last month, notably including PayPal’s PYUSD, which saw its supply grow 48%.

PYUSD is one of several newer stablecoins vying for a piece of USDC’s 70% market share on Solana. It’s joined by USDG — a Paxos-issued stable that pledges to share revenue with its network partners, which include Robinhood and Kraken — and USX, a forthcoming basis-trade token that its developer company dubbed “Solana’s stablecoin.”

I have speculated previously that Solana may look to drive adoption on non-USDC stablecoins, since a significant portion of Circle’s revenue goes to Coinbase, which is possibly building Solana’s chief competitor in Base. On a permissionless network, however, disincentivizing usage of a product that users want is pretty difficult.

Gonzalez Campo noted how alternative stablecoin growth strategies have so far mainly revolved around shelling out incentives for users, but paying for adoption is ultimately unsustainable.

The analyst added he’d like to see a B2B model where upstart stablecoins like USDG share revenue with DeFi protocols to create a vested interest in supply growth.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis

article-image

Stablecoins are a new form of money, with an old kind of limit

article-image

Firedancer has yet to go fully live, but its progress has been “pretty impressive,” a dev said

article-image

House lawmakers support, criticize the GENIUS Act, CLARITY Act and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act in Monday hearing