In December, Solana significantly increased its portfolio by integrating an additional $1 billion in stablecoins, bringing its total to approximately $5 billion. The majority of these assets are in US Dollar Coin (USDC), which alone accounts for nearly $4 billion of the total value locked (TVL) within the Solana network. Tether (USDT) is the second-largest stablecoin on the platform, contributing around $1 billion to the TVL.
The growth in Solana’s stablecoin assets underscores the network’s expanding influence and adoption, especially in the realm of decentralized finance (DeFi). Solana has positioned itself as a formidable competitor to Ethereum, particularly in applications that require smart contracts. Since 2023, Solana’s native cryptocurrency, SOL, has outpaced Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) by roughly eight-fold, with significant growth in total value locked, which surged from about $1.4 billion to more than $8.6 billion in 2024.
This rise coincides with an overall increase in stablecoin market capitalizations following the election win of United States President-elect Donald Trump in November. It is widely speculated that the election results could have positive implications for the cryptocurrency industry. According to Citi Research, the market capitalizations of the leading stablecoins — USDT, USDC, and Dai — have collectively increased by over $25 billion since November, signaling a bullish trend for DeFi. Stablecoins are increasingly seen as the gateway to decentralized finance.
Despite Solana’s impressive growth, Ethereum still holds a significantly larger volume of stablecoin assets, with over $110 billion in TVL as of the end of December. Solana’s network continues to attract retail traders, partly due to growing interest in Solana-based memecoins and artificial intelligence agent tokens.
In response to Solana’s rising prominence, Grayscale added two Solana-native DeFi applications, Jupiter and Jito, to its watchlist for top tokens in early 2025. Notably, Jito, a Solana staking pool, achieved monthly revenues exceeding $100 million from priority fees and tips during November and December, highlighting the growing potential of the Solana ecosystem in the DeFi space.
