Stablecoins ‘in bull market’; Solana sputters: VanEck

Stablecoins are “in a bull market of their own,” even as smart contract platforms — including Ethereum and Solana — sputter amid the marketwide tumult, asset manager VanEck said in an April 3 monthly note.

The diminished activity on smart contract platforms reflects cooling market sentiment in cryptocurrencies and beyond as traders brace for the impact of US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff policies and a looming trade war. 

But stablecoin adoption — a key measure of Web3’s overall health — continues apace. This is partly because ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty “could accelerate the strategic case for crypto,” Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of research, said in an April 4 X post.

Tokenized treasury bills help support stablecoin adoption. Source: VanEck

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Stablecoins collectively added nearly $10 billion in total market capitalization in March as multiple issuers, including VanEck, prepare to launch branded stablecoin products, it said. 

The inflows persisted despite a steep drop in average stablecoin yields, the asset manager noted. 

Stablecoin yields now range from around 3% to 5% — near or slightly below Treasury Bills — compared to as high as 10% at the start of the year, it said. 

Even so, issuance of tokenized Treasury Bills — a primary source of institutional stablecoin yield — increased 26% from February to March, surpassing $5 billion in total issuance, according to the report.

Meanwhile, smart contract platforms suffered across-the-board declines in activity, with revenues and trading volumes dropping 36% and 40%, respectively, according to the report. 

Solana has suffered particularly sharply. Daily fee revenues and decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes diminished by 66% and 53%, respectively, in March, VanEck said.

In fact, Solana’s DEX share of volumes once again fell below those of Ethereum and its layer-2 scaling chains (L2s) after briefly surpassing them for the first time in February. 

Solana lost ground to Ethereum in DEX volume. Source: VanEck

This relative decline partly reflects a slowdown in memecoin trading, which still dominates Solana DEX activity. 

The segment has suffered since February after a series of memecoin-related scandals soured sentiment among retail traders. 

On Feb. 14, Libra, a memecoin seemingly endorsed by Argentine President Javier Milei, erased some $4.4 billion in market capitalization within hours of launching.

In March, trading volumes on Ethereum’s L2s also experienced declines — retracing by some 18% from February — but held up better than Solana’s, according to VanEck.

During the final week of March, “blob fees,” the Ethereum network’s main source of income from L2s, sunk to the lowest weekly levels so far this year, according to Etherscan.

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