6 min readWill stablecoins prove to be blockchain technology’s ‘killer app’? The growth of the total supply of tokens pegged to the US dollar, which accounts for 99% of the sector, reaching €259B (as of September 2025) suggests this may indeed be the case. So how can investors capitalise on this trend, given most stablecoins don’t deliver a return? The primary opportunity comes from the protocols that generate fees from settling transactions, as the greater the utility of their native tokens, the higher their value. Before exploring how Solana has become a key player in this space, here’s a brief overview of the current landscape.
Rise of stablecoins
Stablecoins offer a range of use cases that leverage stability along with the speed and low transaction fees inherent to cryptocurrencies: more efficient cross-border payments, access to savings in US dollars for people all over the world, and a base currency for trading, to name a few.
According to Visa, annual transactions up to September 2025 total €6.2T (excluding activities that distort the volume like high-frequency trading). While substantial, this amount only represents a fraction of the value of daily transfers processed by legacy infrastructure, which averages €7T. That said, stablecoin transactions have risen by 12 times over the last five years, from €523B in 2020.
Two of the top ten cryptos by market capitalisation, USDT and USDC, are stablecoins (as of September 2025). Incidentally, both are backed by traditional collateral, mostly dollars or dollar-denominated assets, such as US Treasuries. In contrast, the next biggest stablecoin, USDe, is synthetic, meaning it relies on derivatives and arbitrage to peg its value to the dollar.
The passing of the GENIUS Act by US lawmakers in July 2025 should help stablecoins play a greater role in the global financial system and drive innovation. This legislation provides a roadmap and regulatory guidelines for the sector, such as ensuring that all stablecoins are backed one-to-one by physical dollars or equivalents and issuers comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, designed to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
Why Solana?
Solana is well-positioned to build its share of the stablecoin sector, primarily due to the network’s speed. This is particularly relevant for cross-border payments which can take up to five days when processed through traditional infrastructure due to the number of intermediaries involved. Thanks to its innovative proof of history mechanism, which timestamps transactions (instead of validators having to agree on the order), Solana has become one of the fastest blockchains by transactions per second (TPS) as of September 2025.
Solana’s low fees are another reason it’s suited to settling stablecoins. Lower costs are a priority for cross-border payments, which average 1.5% for B2B transactions or 6.49% for remittances, according to Banca di Italia. The same applies to people in developing countries, seeking the relative safe haven of US dollars to protect their assets from inflation. Solana’s high throughput helps to prevent congestion, one of the reasons it manages to limit fees to just $0.03 (as of September 2025).
As Lily Liu, Solana’s President, told CoinShares in February 2025: ‘Stablecoins are fast, cheap, and constant. You don't have to wait during US working hours, where you throw a wire into the ether and kind of wait for a couple of days, depending on where you're sending it to. It is really about creating fintech experiences that allow anyone anywhere to spend money and save money’.
Solana had processed €330B worth of stablecoin transactions in the year until September 2025, 5% of the total volume. The vast majority were in USDC (€268B), accounting for 11.5% of that stablecoin’s volume over the same period, with a further €57B in USDT. Visa’s data also shows that Solana’s transaction volume has increased by a compound annual growth rate of 342% since it started tracking stablecoins in October 2020.
Solana: a leading gateway to the stablecoin booming business
As stablecoin adoption continues to rise, driven by the passing of the GENIUS Act in the US, the protocols that settle transactions will benefit from greater fee revenue, which should be reflected in the value of their native tokens. Solana should be able to build its market share, primarily thanks to the protocol’s speed and low fees. Investors can access this growth through exposure to SOL (Solana’s native token), particularly via investment products that integrate seamlessly into traditional portfolios.
