Activity on the Solana blockchain has surged in 2025, particularly around the orgs events, and the associated minting of USDC by Circle, which has added significant movement in the decentralized finance space.
As of January 2025, $8.5 billion worth of USDC has been minted directly on Solana, with $6 billion minted in January alone, and another $2.5 billion minted in February. The latest minting was just nine hours ago, with Circle issuing another $250 million in USDC to Solana. However, even with all this USDC activity, Solana itself has actually fallen out of the top 10 revenue-producing protocols, suggesting the future may be somewhat less bright for Solana than the past few months have been.
A total of 8.5B $USDC has been minted on #Solana by #Circle since Jan 1, 2025.
This includes 6B in January and 2.5B in February.
Their latest mint was 250M $USDC ~9 hours ago
Follow @spotonchain for more real-time updates about #Circle now! https://t.co/O1xfbbo04G pic.twitter.com/jsyoRfAu8Z
— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) February 27, 2025
The Rise of USDC Minting on Solana
Circle, the issuer behind the USDC stablecoin, has been making waves with its consistent minting of new $USDC tokens on Solana. In the first two months of 2025 alone, it minted a total of $8.5 billion on the blockchain, making for quite the influx of this stablecoin, which is commonly used throughout the Solana ecosystem for trading and liquidity within the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. That said, the minting process, which allows Circle to generate more USDC to meet demand, is arguably most reflective of the popularity of USDC as a primary stablecoin on the Solana blockchain.
The spree of minting started in January, and with that came the issuance of USD Coin from Circle. Indeed, Circle issued USD Coin worth $6 billion in January alone, and another $2.5 billion in February. The most recent minting event, of $250 million just some hours ago, sees us in the Solana ecosystem holding more and more USD Coin—an event that should speak to the high demand in our ecosystem for liquidity and stable assets. All of this is underscored by the fact that this week, USDC was added as a direct deposit option at Central Bank for the Solana program.
This minting activity also underscores the Solana network’s capability to accommodate extensive, large-scale stablecoin transactions. This capability is fundamental to Solana as it positions itself within the DeFi landscape and mimics the scenario with USDT. Stablecoins such as USDC are essential for the kind of activities that decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and yield farming strategies do. If any one blockchain cannot support them at scale, then the prospect for that blockchain’s success in the decentralized finance space is dim.
Solana’s Decline in DeFi Rankings
Although Solana has seen substantial expansion in the generation of USDC, it still finds itself in the unfortunate position of not being a leading blockchain within the DeFi sector. According to DeFiLlama, a platform that provides DeFi-related data and metrics, Solana has recently fallen out of the top 10 revenue-generating DeFi protocols. This is a significant step back for Solana, which only recently was at the top of that same list.
This downturn may be due to several factors. Solana has faced network instability issues in the past, including downtime and technical glitches, which have affected user confidence and adoption. These nagging issues have left the door wide open for increased competition from other smart contract platforms. Although Solana still boasts impressive minting figures for USDC, it appears to be at serious risk of losing its status as a top-tier decentralized finance blockchain.
#Solana is catching heat and just dropped out of the top 10 revenue-generating products, per DeFiLlama.
Meanwhile, $USDT & $USDC still dominate at the top, while DeFi leaders include $CAKE, $UNI, $HYPE, LDO, and $JTO.
A rough stretch for SOL—let’s see if it fights back. pic.twitter.com/mHmFZOdBfp
— Kyledoops (@kyledoops) February 27, 2025
Conversely, stablecoins such as $USDC and $USDT continue to rule the decentralized finance (DeFi) scene. These two stablecoins are still the primary choices for providing liquidity and setting up trading pairs on decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Accordingly, USDC has been mostly touted as one of the safest and most utilized stablecoins throughout many blockchain networks, including Solana. Nonetheless, its utilization is stripped of any significant influence with regards to the Solana DEX landscape. In fact, there seems to be no substantial influence or appearance of USDC in the DEX ecosystem that Solana has established so far.
The Dominance of Other DeFi Leaders
As Solana grapples with these challenges, other blockchain projects and DeFi tokens are stepping up to claim leadership positions in the market. Platforms such as PancakeSwap ($CAKE), Uniswap ($UNI), HypeSwap ($HYPE), Lido Finance ($LDO), and Jito Labs ($JTO) have been seeing increased attention and activity from the DeFi community.
PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange operating on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), has steadily raked in lots of revenue. It is one of the top platforms in the DeFi sector—right up there with Compound and Aave. Uniswap still leads in both volume and liquidity in the DeFi exchange space. And in that same space, you also have HypeSwap, Lido Finance, and Jito Labs developing products and services that are just right for DeFi. HypeSwap stands out even more as a unicorn in that sector, a real path breaker.
The leaders of DeFi keep growing and it could be that Solana becomes an also-ran. It is not hard to see why. This blockchain’s problems keep cropping up and not going away. Stability is the most important, but it also needs user adoption and the overall development of its ecosystem. If it hopes to reclaim its place among the leading DeFi platforms, it has to mint and support more than just the USDC.
Conclusion: A Turning Point for Solana
The crypto industry’s rapid minting of $USDC by Circle underscores its ongoing significance in the stablecoin and DeFi world. Solana is the counterparty to that minting, and it is a digital bridge to the traditional U.S. dollar for billions of people. At the same time, however, the Solana blockchain is facing an uphill fight to hold onto its not-quite-very-far-north position in the rankings of the 60,000 blockchains that comprise the World Wide Web of crypto. It manifested 60,000 new blocks to the crypto world in September 2023.
Solana must tackle several things to return to the upper echelon of DeFi blockchains. It has to figure out how to fix or at least stabilize the network, not just for the immediate future but with some assurance that this won’t be an ongoing problem that keeps coming back to haunt users and developers. And it has to work even faster in light of how quickly everything else in DeFi is moving. It has to enhance its offering to developers—attracting them to build on Solana is a top issue at this point. And it has to enhance the experience of users, who have to be attracted to and retained on the network. The halcyon days of 2021 when Solana was the up-and-coming platform that everyone wanted to use, were largely based on a false premise that the network was stable.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news!
Image Source: alexandarilich/123RF // Image Effects by Colorcinch