Solana Dominates Ethereum in Stablecoin Payment Volume: Bernstein - Decrypt

Solana is winning the payments race, global investment firm AllianceBernstein declared today. 

Firm analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra said in a Tuesday note that stablecoin use was growing again during the current bull market. 

Solana, the blockchain behind the fifth-biggest cryptocurrency, SOL, is leading the charge among stablecoins that are being used for cross-border payments.

“The big change this cycle has been the dominant market share of Solana (43% highest share) in value of stablecoins transferred vs. prior cycle market leader Ethereum,” the report read. 

Data from crypto data platform Artemis shows that as of yesterday, Solana’s market share of stablecoins transferred stood at $63.6 billion of the $116.7 billion total. Ethereum came in second with $26.6 billion. 

It’s worth noting that Ethereum still wins in terms of actual stablecoins on its blockchain by market cap—but a lot of that capital is not being used. 

The Bernstein report added that despite Solana’s growth and overtaking Ethereum’s market share for value transferred, the project still has a long way to go—especially when it comes to scalability. 

“Further, scalability requirement for consumer payments would require 15-20 fold growth from here,” the Bernstein analysts noted.

Despite Solana being a fast blockchain, it has struggled with congestion issues as of late. Increasing user activity is putting strain on the network, and stakeholders are pondering on what to do to improve its usability. 

Stablecoins are used in the crypto ecosystem to move around funds without the risk of them suddenly dropping or going up in value—like assets Bitcoin and Ethereum do. Such coins and tokens are backed by something stable like the U.S. dollar or other fiat currencies. 

They run on a number of different blockchains: Ethereum, Tron, and Solana, being examples. 

Solana became hot again last year after payments giant Visa said it would use the blockchain’s tech to speed up credit card payments. Then, Solana’s payment protocol Solana Pay integrated with the e-commerce platform Shopify, allowing merchants to accept stablecoin USDC via the blockchain.  

This is likely why Solana is taking up so much of the market share of stablecoins moving around the crypto ecosystem compared to Ethereum. 

But despite being used by the big names, the blockchain still hasn’t broken into more mainstream consumer or B2B payments, the analysts noted.

Some in the industry expected Solana to crash and burn because it was favored by convicted crypto criminal Sam Bankman-Fried and his now-collapsed FTX empire. 

But the opposite happened and its market cap grew—bringing SOL’s price with it. The price of SOL now stands at $174.52, according to CoinGecko. It is still over 33% below its November 2021 all-time high of $259.96.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.