What is USD Coin?

The USD Coin (USDC) is a type of cryptocurrency that is also called "Stablecoin" or stablecoin. So called thanks to the fact that each USDC is backed by one US dollar, reserved in a bank account. In other words, it is always possible to exchange 1 USDC for US$ 1.00, which gives it a stable price. The USD Coin is an Ethereum token, so it can be stored in a wallet compatible with this digital currency such as the Coinbase wallet.

The USDC is a digital currency pegged to a fiat currency: the US dollar. It was launched on the market in September 2018 and developed by the Center Consortium, made up of Coinbase and Circle Internet Financial. Although it is the latter that issues USDC, while Coinbase is the platform that users access to make deposits, convert fiat currency into USDC tokens and facilitate USDC transactions. It also provides the ability to exchange Fiat to cryptocurrencies [1].

What are its main advantages and disadvantages?

The main advantage of this project over other stablecoin is that being an ERC-20 token, it is quite common to see it listed in DApps or DEX of the Ethereum ecosystem. Compatibility at this point is assured with these applications, so if there is a larger audience able to use it, greater will be its recognition, its liquidity in the markets and therefore its fungibility will be better assured [2].

Another point in favor is that since it is an ERC-20 token, it is easy to integrate it with wallets, so you can find support for these cryptocurrencies in most of the wallets that exist in the crypto world.

Additionally, being linked to the Ethereum ecosystem, this gives it greater speed than other stablecoins, although not by much. For example, Tether on OmniLayer (using Bitcoin) may be slow, but nothing beats the security of the Bitcoin blockchain. In addition, Tether now also has versions of its token running on Ethereum (ERC-20) and on TRON (TRX-20), the latter two options being the same or faster, as well as cheaper.

On the downside, this project is still a centralized model, where trust rests with a number of individuals who may not be exactly transparent with the management of coin reserves. This is a very big risk when talking about billions of dollars, which can disappear at any moment due to any action in the traditional financial world. A risk that those who bet on this project should be aware of before deciding to enter this world of stablecoins.

The intention of this dashboard is to take a look at the usage of USDC across all the changes to compare how users are using the token on each of them. As well, the reader can choose which chain considered to carry out a more detailed analysis. The chains included in the analysis are: Algorand, Arbitrum, Axelar, Ethereum, Flow, Near, Optimism, Osmosis, Polygon and Solana.

The main objective is to create a dashboard that compares and monitors which chains are most active and liquid in their transfers of USDC. As well, a more secondary objective is to lead the reader to show not only an overall comparison of all the chains together, but also to go dive deeper into a selected chain.

The main metrics analyzed are:

• Amount transferred, average amount per transfer, and number of wallets transferring USDC 
• Distribution of transfers 
• USDC usage patterns based on time and date
• Is USDC transfer volume correlated with price volume

Metrics Comparison across all the chains

Overview

Methods

Amount transferred, average amount per transfer, and number of wallets transferring USDC 

Daily Amount transferred, average amount per transfer, and number of wallets transferring USDC 

Distribution of transfers 

Correlation of USDC transfer volume with price volume

USDC usage patterns based on time and date

Deep analysis about the selected chain (it can be choosen through the parameters above. Please see instructions section)

Amount transferred, average amount per transfer, and number of wallets transferring USDC 

Daily amount transferred, average amount per transfer, and number of wallets transferring USDC 

Distribution of transfers 

Correlation of USDC transfer volume with price volume

USDC usage patterns based on time and date

Instructions for parametrization

The intention of the dashboard is to show a comparison about the USDC transfers accross all the chains and to analyze in a dive deep manner each of the chains. So, the idea here is to make the dashboard as more as personalized for the reader as possible. To do that, several parameters have been created to be selected by the reader.

The main parameters are:

• Number: number of days, weeks or months selected to be analyzed
• Period: to determine the timeframe of the dashboard → days, weeks or months
• Periodocity: the reader can select if the visualizations are by days, weeks or months
• Chain: reader can select which chain will be analyzed in a dive deep to be presented after the comparison approach.

So, the steps to follow are: first choose the parameters and fill each of them above the dashboard. Once the parameters are selected, press the Apply All Parameters button to be applied.