USDC Across The Chains

sC.R.E.A.M: stableCoins Rule Everything Around Me. For most blockchains, the ruler is the might stablecoin and on top of that is $USDC. So whats really happening on-chain with $USDC. In this analysis, USDC is explored across chain by analyzing on-chain transfers, the associated volume and the distribution of transfers. as well as the distinct addresses transferring and a breakdown for the number of wallets that hold $USDC. Transfers are defined as as interaction on chain that involves the

$USDC contract address. To use, filter to the desired blockchain in the parameter box. The following chains are analyzed: Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Optimism, Osmosis, Binance Smart Chain, Axelar, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Algorand. PastXDays parameter controls how many days to view in the analysis. The default is the past 30 days

Summary Breakdown by Chain

In terms of transfers Polygon and Solana, have had more txs than Ethereum. This since both chains tend to have more txs than Ethereum
What doesn’t make sense is Optimism and Arbitrum having more $USDC transfers than Ethereum. Both have less total transactions than Ethereum so why the large influx in $USDC transfers
For Volume, Ethereum is king in terms of $USDC volume with over $500B total volume in the past 30 days. Solana comes in second $227B then Polygon at $14B
For some strange reason, Algorand has the most distinct address, not sure why this is the case.
Once again, Ethereum is the top for distinct addresses.
The average USDC transfer across networks seems to be quite skewed. Ethereum’s average $USDC transfer is $188k. For the other chains they tend to be in the 1k - 7.5k range

Distribution of USDC Transfers Across Chains

For Ethereum ~40% of transfers involve less than $10 USDC. Seems like such a small amount considering the gas prices of the network
Similiar transfer distributions can be observed for Arbitrum and Arbitrum compared to Ethereum
80% of Algorand Transfers are less than 10 $USDC
Solana has similar numbers to Ethereum (45%) This was surprising since Solana has such low fees, it would be assumed to be higher
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Top Holders of $USDC

Ethereum has over 1M+ USDC holders with some wallets holding billions of $USDC (most likely dapps/DeFi/Cexes). The 100th largest wallet holdes $40M. Big MONEY
.For Optimism, over 100k wallets hold $USDC . The top wallet holds over $60M. What’s interesting is that the 100th biggest holder only holds 220k of $USDC. For a “Whale” this does not seem like a lot of $USDC
Over 25k+ wallets hold less than 1 $USDC for Arbitrum, majority of wallets hold less than $500 USDC

USDC Transfers over Time

Across all chains in the analysis, the number of $USDC transfers was anywhere from 800k to 1.2M transfers per day
There is a noticeable spike in $USDC transfers around the events of the FTX debacle. Both Ethereum and Solana saw alot of volume movement with each chain having $44B and $20B move in a single day
There are a few whales pushing quite a low of volume in a given transfer. For Ethereum one whale moved over $635M $USDC in a single transfer (hence the large skew). For Solana, a large spike was scene around the FTX debacle where in a single transfer of $500M was moved
For most of the other big chains, the max transfer was around a couple million per day. Chains like Near, Algorand, Osmosis, Axelar, and Flow only had highs in the tens or hundreds of thousands
One weird thing for $USDC transfers / total transfers is how high Arbtirum, Axelar, and Optimism are. A majority of transactions and wallets are engaging in a $USDC transfer on a given day (Ethereum has ~15% of transfers related to USDC while Optimism and Arbitrum have 60%+). For Optimism and Arbitrum, my hypothesis is these are Sybils trying to gain an airdrop
For other chains, the % of USDC transfers vs total transfers can range anywhere from 5% to 25%
Binance has one of the lowest (<2%) most likely due to the native $BUSD being the preferred stablecoin of the network
Algorand saw a weird spike in address for distinct $USDC transfers on 10/25. Why could this be?

Conclusion

Ethereum is the biggest player (in terms of volume and distinct wallets) when it comes to $USDC
There is some weird behavior with Arbitrum and Optimism where more than 68% of transfers involve $USDC and they have a higher overall transfer count for $USDC than Ethereum
There was a noticeable spike in $USDC volume around the FTX debacle where over some transfers were reaching up to $500M+ for Solana and Ethereum
For the most part, the distribution for USDC transfers is relatively small. They are less than $10
Similarly, most wallets hold very little $USDC. Majority hold less than 500 $USDC

Correlation Between Native Asset and Volume

While there is a slight correlation between assets for volume, average transfer size, and 3 of transfers it is quite weak (less than.5)
For Ethereum in the past 30 days there was an inverse between the total $USDC volume and Ethereum. This would make sense as people would flock to stables to avoid loss
Optimism did not have as strong of a correlation (.19) and even zooming out to 100 days resulted in similar results
For the past 30 days, Solana had one of the higher correlations at .46. This is most likely due to the price of $SOL free falling and people leaving for $USDC due to the FTX debacle

Day of Week

The Volume / # of Transfers is quite even between working days
There is a large decline in the weekend for both metrics
The two most popular days appear to be Wednesday and Tuesday, smack in the middle of the week

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