Just saw a deep analysis on stablecoins released by Dune, and the data is quite interesting. We used to only know that the stablecoin market size exceeds $300 billion, but we actually knew very little about the real picture of this market.

First is changes in supply. As of January, the fully diluted supply of 15 major stablecoins reached $304 billion, up 49% from last year. USDT and USDC still dominate absolutely, at $189.69 billion and $77.52 billion respectively, together accounting for 89% of the market. But what’s more interesting is the performance of the challengers in 2025 below: USDS grew 376% to $11.49 billion, PayPal’s PYUSD increased 753% to $3.44 billion, and Ripple’s RLUSD grew an astonishing 1803%. Although these new entrants are still far smaller than the giants, their growth rates are indeed changing the market landscape.

Looking at distribution by blockchain, Ethereum remains the main battleground, accounting for 58% of the supply. Tron accounts for 28%, and Solana only 5%. Interestingly, this distribution has remained basically unchanged over the past year, suggesting that cross-chain movement of stablecoins isn’t as dramatic as people might imagine.

Next, consider who holds these stablecoins. Centralized exchanges hold $80 billion, the largest holder category. Large wallet holders hold $39 billion. The holdings of DeFi yield protocols nearly doubled, reaching $9.3 billion, reflecting the heat of on-chain yield strategies. Issuer wallets and contract addresses grew 4.6 times, from $2.2 billion to $10.2 billion—this directly indicates how many new stablecoins are entering the market.

But there is an important observation here: 172 million addresses hold these 15 stablecoins, which seems to indicate high dispersion. Yet once you dig deeper, you’ll find that the distribution of USDT, USDC, and DAI is indeed broad, with the top 10 wallets holding only 23–26% of the supply. But other stablecoins are completely different—USDS’s top 10 wallets hold 90%, USDF holds 99%, and USD0 is even at 99%, with particularly high concentration. This means the way we interpret data for these emerging stablecoins has to be entirely different.

January’s transaction volume data is even more shocking. The stablecoin transfer volume across the three major chains reached $10.3 trillion, more than double the figure from January last year. Interestingly, Base, despite having only $4.4 billion in stablecoin supply, produced $5.9 trillion in transaction volume—what does that indicate? It indicates that stablecoin liquidity on Base is extremely active. Ethereum is $2.4 trillion, Tron is $682 billion, and Solana is $544 billion.

By token, USDC’s transfer volume hit $8.3 trillion, nearly 5 times USDT’s $1.7 trillion, even though USDC’s supply is only one-third of USDT’s. This suggests that USDC’s on-chain liquidity and activity are far higher than USDT’s. DAI’s transfer volume is $138 billion, USDS is $92 billion, and USD1 is $43 billion.

But what’s truly interesting is the categorization of purposes behind these transfers. DEX liquidity and market trading account for $5.9 trillion, the largest single use, reflecting that stablecoins’ core role is market making and providing liquidity. Flash loans reach $1.3 trillion—these are automated arbitrage and liquidation loops. Traditional lending activity is $137 billion. Centralized exchange inflows and outflows total $599 billion. Issuer minting, burning, and rebalancing operations reach $1.06 trillion, up 150% from $4200 billion in the same period last year.

Another metric especially worth paying attention to is velocity—transfer volume divided by supply—reflecting stablecoins’ activity level as a medium of exchange. USDC’s daily velocity on Base reaches 14x, which is an astonishing number. On Solana and Polygon, it’s about 1x. USDT on BNB Chain is 1.4x, and on Tron is 0.3x, but it’s particularly stable—this reflects that Tron is indeed a major channel for cross-border payments.

USDe and USDS have slower velocities, but that’s a design feature. Both are interest-bearing stablecoins, with most of the supply locked in yield protocols, so low velocity isn’t a drawback—it’s a characteristic.

The most interesting finding is that the same coin can serve completely different purposes on different chains. PayPal USD’s daily velocity on Solana is 0.6x, but on Ethereum it’s only 0.1x—exactly a 6x difference. This shows that the ecosystem is the deciding factor.

This dataset also covers more than 200 stablecoins, not just dollar-pegged ones. There are 17 euro stablecoins, with a total supply of $9.9 billion. There are also stablecoins pegged to the Brazilian real, Japanese yen, Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, and other fiat currencies, with a total supply of $12 billion. The stablecoin infrastructure for these emerging markets is being built on-chain—for example, an exchange rate like 420 USD to naira—and will become increasingly important in local stablecoin ecosystems.

Overall, this dataset provides a granularity far beyond any previous analysis. Every transfer is categorized into specific activity types, and each wallet is tagged with the holder identity. This is the real way to answer the question of “how stablecoins are actually used.” With 90% of transfer volume categorized into specific activity categories, we can see the true role of stablecoins in the entire blockchain technology stack—not just as trading objects, but also as liquidity infrastructure, capital efficiency tools, and cross-chain bridges.