Data speaks: How Dune stablecoin research uncovers the truth about the $300 billion market and the future of cross-border payments

When the total supply of stablecoins surpasses the $300 billion mark, people often only see the number itself. But the latest data framework from Dune Research reveals much more — it opens a window into who is using these assets, how they are used, where, and why this is so critical for global cross-border payments and local financial inclusion. Developed in partnership with SteakhouseFi, this data framework is changing how institutions and regulators understand the stablecoin market.

This is not just about supply data. When Meta announces integration of third-party stablecoin payments, the US OCC approves stablecoin custody licenses, or PayPal enables stablecoin features for 2 million businesses, those who can accurately grasp actual market usage will hold the key to the next wave of growth.

Evolution of the Supply Landscape: Rise of New Players and Stability of Traditional Giants

By early 2026, the fully diluted supply of the top 15 stablecoins on EVM, Solana, and Tron reaches $304 billion, up 49% from a year earlier. But this total masks a more interesting story: the landscape of market dominance is quietly shifting.

USDT (Tether) and USDC (Circle) remain the dominant players, holding $197 billion and $70.7 billion respectively, together accounting for 89% of the market share. Chain distribution shows Ethereum hosting $176 billion (58%), Tron $84 billion (28%), Solana $15 billion (5%), BNB Chain $13 billion (4%). This distribution has changed little over the past year — the traditional giants’ strongholds seem unbreakable.

But the story at the lower levels is entirely different. 2025 is the “year of challengers.”

USDS (from MakerDAO/Sky ecosystem) grew 376%, reaching $6.3 billion. PYUSD (PayPal), with a total supply of $4 billion, is highly concentrated — 84% held by the top addresses (a typical trait of emerging stablecoins). RLUSD (Ripple) surged from $5.8 million to $1.1 billion, an 1803% increase — reflecting Ripple’s commitment to building cross-border payment infrastructure. USD1 (World Liberty Financial) started from zero and now circulates $2.15 billion, indicating strong institutional demand for stablecoins.

USDe (Ethena) declined from its peak but ended at $5.82 billion (up 23%), with its unique delta-neutral yield mechanism attracting participants interested in risk-adjusted returns.

What does this diversified landscape imply? The stablecoin market is evolving from “winner-takes-all” toward “multiple coexistence,” with different tokens serving different needs — trading, yield, cross-border payments, or local applications.

Holder Structure: Power Shift from Whales to Institutions

The real strength of stablecoins isn’t in issuance volume but in how they are held and used. Dune’s dataset tracks address balances, making this invisible world visible.

As of March 2026, over 172 million unique addresses hold at least one mainstream stablecoin. Among them, USDT covers 136 million addresses, USDC 36 million, DAI 4.7 million. These numbers seem huge, but concentration is the key metric.

USDT, USDC, and DAI show relatively democratic distribution: the top 10 wallets hold only 23–26% of supply, with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI — a standard measure of market concentration, 0 being fully dispersed, 1.0 a single holder) below 0.03. This indicates genuine liquidity and usage scenarios supporting the market.

In contrast, emerging stablecoins tell a different story. USDS, with $6.9 billion in circulation, is 90% concentrated in the top 10 wallets (HHI 0.48). USDF’s top 10 addresses hold 99% of supply (HHI 0.54). USD0 is the most extreme: not only do the top 10 hold 99%, but within those addresses, the supply is highly concentrated (HHI 0.84), meaning even among the largest holders, 1–2 addresses dominate.

This isn’t a flaw but a phase characteristic. Many new stablecoins are just starting or are designed as institutional products. But it also means that interpreting their “market demand” requires a different perspective from USDT or USDC — what you see may be strategic positions of a few major players rather than broad market adoption.

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) hold $80 billion, up from $58 billion last year, confirming their role as key infrastructure. Whale wallets hold $39 billion. On-chain yield protocols hold nearly double — $9.3 billion — reflecting the rise of structured yield strategies.

Most importantly, 77% of supply is tagged and traceable to specific holder types, providing invaluable transparency for any institution seeking to understand true risk exposure.

Explosive Trading: $10.3 Trillion in March’s DAO Dance

In January 2026, stablecoin trading volume on EVM, Solana, and Tron hit $10.3 trillion — more than double the same period last year. This number seems incredible, but the distribution behind it defies many assumptions.

Base leads with $5.9 trillion in volume — despite only $440 million in stablecoin supply. What drives this? High-frequency DeFi activity, liquidity mining incentives, and algorithmic trading. Ethereum follows with $2.4 trillion, Tron $682 billion, Solana $544 billion, BNB Chain $406 billion.

By coin, USDC is the most active — $83 trillion in transfers, five times USDT’s volume, even though USDC’s supply is only 40% of USDT’s. What does this tell us? USDC’s liquidity and usage frequency are far higher than USDT’s. DAI $138 billion, USDS $92 billion, USD1 $43 billion.

But the raw data is neutral. This $10.3 trillion includes both real economic activity and bot arbitrage. Dune’s design philosophy is to provide an objective on-chain view, allowing users to apply their own filters — whether to exclude bots, identify organic activity, or define other metrics.

What Are Stablecoins Really Doing?

From here, analysis becomes more specific. Dune classifies this $10.3 trillion flow by its actual purpose — a key turning point from “just knowing it moved” to “understanding why it moved.”

1. Market infrastructure ($5.9 trillion) — providing liquidity to DEX pools and extracting assets from them is the largest single use. It reflects stablecoins’ core role as the backbone of on-chain market liquidity, with 75% driven by incentives (liquidity mining, capital optimization) rather than pure trading. DEX swaps contribute $376 billion.

2. Leverage and capital efficiency ($1.437 trillion) — flash loans (arbitrage and liquidations) account for $1.3 trillion, while traditional lending activities (deposit, borrow, repay, withdraw) contribute $137 billion. This layer represents short-term capital efficiency and structured credit on-chain.

3. Channels and gateways ($599 billion) — inflows and outflows at centralized exchanges (deposits $224 billion, withdrawals $224 billion, internal transfers $151 billion) plus cross-chain bridges ($28 billion). Stablecoins serve as the payment pipeline connecting CEXs and on-chain, as well as across different blockchains.

4. Issuer operations ($1.06 trillion) — minting ($280 billion), burning ($200 billion), balance adjustments ($230 billion), and other issuer activities. This has grown nearly fivefold from last year’s $42 billion, directly reflecting the scale of new stablecoins entering the market.

5. Yield protocols ($2.7 billion) — although smaller, this segment is structurally significant, closely tied to on-chain asset management and structured strategies.

Overall, 90% of transfers flow through identified activity categories, giving us a detailed view of stablecoin usage across each technical layer.

Liquidity Velocity: Same Coin, Different Worlds

One of the most overlooked metrics in stablecoin analysis is daily average velocity — total daily transfers divided by total supply. It indicates how actively a stablecoin circulates rather than being statically held.

USDC circulates fastest on L2 and Solana. On Base, median daily velocity reaches 14x — driven by high-frequency DeFi activity. On Solana and Polygon, around 1x. Even on Ethereum, USDC’s velocity is about 0.9x, meaning nearly the entire supply circulates daily.

USDT moves fastest in trading and cross-border payment networks. On BNB Chain, daily velocity hits 1.4x, reflecting intense transaction activity. On Tron, 0.3x, stable and suited for cross-border payments. On Ethereum, only 0.2x — over $100 billion in supply largely static, indicating USDT here is mainly for long-term holding or large settlements rather than daily circulation.

USDe and USDS have slower velocities, but this is by design. USDe on Ethereum has a daily velocity of only 0.09x, as users often stake it as sUSDe to earn Ethena’s delta-neutral fund fees. USDS’s daily velocity is 0.5x, as most supply is locked in Sky savings or lending markets like Aave for yield. These assets are technically designed as yield accumulators rather than mediums of exchange.

Underlying blockchain matters more than individual coins. PYUSD on Solana has a daily velocity of 0.6x, over four times its Ethereum counterpart (0.1x). The same coin, vastly different usage patterns depending on the ecosystem.

Beyond the Dollar: Local Stablecoins Reshaping Global Payment Infrastructure

This research primarily focuses on 15 USD-pegged stablecoins, but the full dataset covers over 200 stablecoins representing more than 20 fiat currencies. Here are the most promising frontiers.

Euro stablecoins (17 tokens, $9.9 million supply), Brazilian real ($1.41 million), Japanese yen ($13 million), Nigerian Naira (NGN), Kenyan Shilling (KES), South African Rand (ZAR), Turkish Lira (TRY), Indonesian Rupiah (IDR), Singapore dollar (SGD), and others — 59 local fiat stablecoins are live across six continents, nearly 30% of the full dataset.

What does this mean? A real-time, on-chain infrastructure for local payments worldwide. Direct exchange rates — from 17 euros to Nigerian Naira, from Indonesian Rupiah to ZAR — represent a new layer of financial inclusion and cross-border efficiency. These are not speculative tools but foundational infrastructure providing USD alternatives for underserved markets.

Currently, non-dollar stablecoins total only $120 million in supply, but growth trajectories and diversity suggest an emerging explosive sector. Institutional payments and regulatory adoption (as seen in recent moves by Meta, PayPal, OCC) could accelerate this trend.

The Tip of the Iceberg: The Era of Institutional-Grade Data Analysis Has Begun

This analysis only scratches the surface of the full dataset. The joint framework by Dune and SteakhouseFi covers nearly 200 stablecoins across more than 30 blockchains.

But the real difference lies in the classification layer. Every transaction is mapped to its on-chain trigger condition, categorized into one of nine activity types based on a deterministic priority framework. Every balance is segmented by holder type, with consistent cross-chain classification standards. Together, they turn noisy blockchain logs into structured, comparable data — revealing shifts in mechanisms, cross-regional capital flows, concentration risks, and participation patterns.

This granularity makes possible previously unanswerable questions: Which wallets started accumulating new stablecoins before exchange listings? How did holder concentration change in the days before de-pegging events? What are the cross-chain bridge flows for euro-pegged stablecoins? How tightly are issuer minting/burning patterns linked to market pressures?

This is the data foundation for institutional analysis, research reports, risk modeling frameworks, compliance workflows, and operational dashboards. The depth is here. Start exploring.