Solana adds $1B worth of stablecoins in December

Solana (SOL) onboarded an additional $1 billion in stablecoin total value in December, primarily in US Dollar Coin (USDC), according to data from DefiLlama

The inflows highlight accelerating stablecoin adoption and the Solana network’s rise to prominence in 2024, particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Solana now hosts approximately $5 billion in stablecoin total value locked (TVL), with nearly $4 billion of that comprising USDC, according to the data.

Tether (USDT) is Solana’s second most popular stablecoin, at roughly $1 billion in TVL

Source: Dan Smith

Related: DeFi TVL nears 2021 highs on liquid restaking, Bitcoin L2s

Stablecoin adoption

As of Dec. 31, USDT’s and USDC’s total market capitalizations across blockchain networks are around $137 billion and $44 billion, respectively, according to CoinGecko

Stablecoin market capitalizations increased sharply after United States President-elect Donald Trump’s election win in November. Many believe Trump’s win in the US presidential race will benefit the industry, Cointelegraph Research said.

Since November, the combined market capitalizations of the top three stablecoins — USDT, USDC, and Dai — collectively grew by more than $25 billion, according to a Dec. 26 Citi Research report

This is bullish for DeFi in particular, as “stablecoins are the on-ramp to decentralized finance,” Citi said

Source: Citi

Ethereum challenger

Solana has emerged as a serious challenger to Ethereum in DeFi and in other applications requiring smart contracts.

Since 2023, SOL has outperformed Ether (ETH) by approximately eight times, according to data from TradingView

In 2024, Solana’s TVL rose by roughly five times, from around $1.4 billion to upward of $8.6 billion, according to DefiLlama

“[R]etail traders increasingly enter the crypto market through Solana [as] speculation intensifies around Solana-based memecoins and AI agent tokens,” Grayscale Research said in a Dec. 30 note

In December, Grayscale added Jupiter and Jito — two Solana-native DeFi apps — to its list of the top 20 tokens to watch in the first quarter of 2025.

Jito, a Solana staking pool, clocked monthly revenue from priority fees and tips of more than $100 million in November and December, according to crypto researcher Kairos Research.

However, Ethereum’s stablecoin TVL still greatly surpasses Solana’s, exceeding $110 billion as of Dec. 31, according to DefiLlama

Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins