Will Polkadot’s USDC integration boost the network?

• The native version of USDC has been launched on Polkadot.
• Polkadot has seen a surge in network activity in the last week.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has launched the native version of USD Coin [USDC] on Polkadot [DOT], allowing the network’s users to mint, redeem, and transfer USDC directly on the network’s parachains without having to bridge it from another chain.

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The launch of native USDC support on Polkadot is part of a broader trend of USDC being launched natively on multiple chains in the last month. The stablecoin has been launched on Optimism [OP], Coinbase [BASE], and Near [NEAR] within the last 30 days. 

USCD’s aggressive launch across multiple chains is due to the need to shore up its plummeting market share. The coin’s market share took a hit in March after Silicon Valley Bank [SVB] unexpectedly collapsed.

On 11 March, Circle confirmed it could not access $3.3 billion of its $40 billion in USDC reserves locked up at SVB. This immediately caused USDC to lose its $1 peg, and it traded as low as $0.96 on 12 March before finally regaining its peg on 16 March.

Moreover, in a recently published insight, Glassnode found that USDC’s supply has declined by over $16 billion since the current cycle lows set in November 2022. In terms of dominance, USDC’s dominance has since fallen from 38% to 22%. 

Polkadot in the last week

In the last week, Polkadot’s network activity has seen an uptick. Information from The Block’s data dashboard showed that since 13 September, the daily count of unique addresses active on Polkadot either as a sender or receiver has increased by 49%.

As of 19 September, 7,140 addresses completed transactions on the chain.

Due to a jump in the active address count, the number of transactions executed on the chain has also rallied. Information retrieved from the same data provider revealed that within the period under review, Polkadot has witnessed a 32% increase in its daily number of transactions. 

As expected, network fees and revenues have also gone up. Data from Token Terminal revealed that these have climbed by 40% in the last seven days.

Source: Token Terminal

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While existing users may have actively engaged with Polkadot in the last week, the period has been marked by a dearth of new demand.

Data from TheBlock showed that after the number of unique addresses that appeared for the first time in a transaction on Polkadot peaked at 1,100 on 17 September, it has since plummeted. As of 19 September, only 970 new addresses were created on the blockchain. 

Source: The Block