USDC Transfer Volumes

    Compare USDC transfer volumes on Algorand, Solana, Ethereum in 2022.

    Introduction: What the USDC are you doing?

    USDC is a centralized stablecoin which is pegged to the US Dollar and backed by reserve assets. It is managed by Centre, a consortium founded by digital payments company Circle and has Coinbase and Bitmain as one of their investors. It is available as an Ethereum ERC20 token, Algorand ASA asset or Solana SPL token, amongst other blockchain but how are users transferring USDC in these chains? Let's dive in the analysis!

    Methodology

    A CTE per chain is created following the structure defined in each section. These three CTEs are joined with two subsequent operations later to obtain one table with all results.

    Algorand

    The table algorand.transactions is queried for count(tx_id), sum(tx_message:txn:aamt/pow(10,6) and sum(fee) aggregated by day to obtain the daily transactions, USDC volume and fee volume in ALGO since January 1st. The constraints asset_id = '31566704' for USDC and tx_type_name = 'asset transfer' for transfers were also used.

    Solana

    The table solana.fact_transfers is queried for count(tx_id)and sum(amount) aggregated by day to obtain the daily transactions and USDC volume since January 1st. The constraints mint = 'EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v' for USDC is also used.

    Ethereum

    The table ethereum.udm_events is queried for count(tx_id)and sum(amount) aggregated by day to obtain the daily transactions and USDC volume since January 1st. The constraints contract_address = '0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48' for USDC and event_name = 'transfer' for transfers were also used.

    Results

    Figure 1. shows the daily volume for USDC transfer for the three blockchains. Algorand and Solana volumes are on the left y-axis while Ethereum is on the right y-axis. All three chains have similar behaviour with high activity days followed by low activity days. SOmetimes these high activity days are correlated, but not always. January 21st is a high activity day in all three networks.

    Algorand daily transferred volume fluctuates between 2M and 130M USDC, Solana between 90M and 1B USDC and ETH between 3B and 18B USDC. Numbers seem a bit high for Solana and Ethereum since the 24h volume for USDC is according to Coinmarketcap is 3B.

    Conclusion

    USDC transfers in Algorand show low levels when compared to Solana and Ethereum. In terms of daily transactions, it is around 3 and 4 times bigger than Algorand respectively but in terms of daily volume, the difference is around one order of magnitude: 130M, 1B and 18B respectively. Average USDC transfer size is also similar as it is a function of daily volume.

    I believe my assumption on what can be considered as a transfer with tx_type_name and event_name may not be as accurate as I imagined since volume looks too big and I was able to find single transactions which account for the half of the daily volume for Algorand and Solana. For Ethereum, weird transactions where big amounts are transferred back and forth between one address and a pool may well be the case for some inacurate results.

    Loading...
    Loading...
    Loading...

    Figure 2. shows daily USDC transactions by blockchain. Algorand is quite stable around 10k txs, with 3 high peaks of over 25k txs and a low activity 10-day period of 5k. (this period corresponds to the time after the Tinyman hack as analysed in other dashboards. Solana and Ethereum have a saw teeth profile with high and low transactions days, hoovering between 20k and 80k for Solana and between 30k and 80k for Ethereum.

    Figure 3. shows the daily average USDC transfer size by blockchain. Algorand and Solana are represented on the left y-axis and Ethereum on the right. A similar profile as in Figure 1. appears here as well, having a very big fluctuation on the transfer size.

    Algorand fluctuates between 200 and 10k USDC, Solana between 2k and 35k USDC and Ethereum btween 85k and 325k USDC. Ethereum numbers seem somehow too big, because a daily average size of 325k USDC implies a very big number of humongous transfers.

    Loading...

    Figure 4. shows the hourly average USDC transfer size for January 21st. For all three networks, there is very high peak which does not look normal. Looking for big size txs around the time these peaks happen, I can identify the following transactions:

    • Over 36M USDC on Algorand from address 2UEQTE5QDNXPI7M3TU44G6SYKLFWLPQO7EBZM7K7MHMQQMFI4QJPLHQFHM, which accounts for 40% of the daily volume. This address is labeled as Circle in Algoexplorer
    • Over 560M USDC on Solana from address 2ojv9BAiHUrvsm9gxDe7fJSzbNZSJcxZvf8dqmWGHG8S, which accounts for more than 50% of the daily volume.
    • 113M USDC and 137M USDC on Ethereum which withdraw and repaid a total of 240M USDC from address 0x28a55c4b4f9615fde3cdaddf6cc01fcf2e38a6b0 to AAVE v2: aUSDC Pool.