Introduction
There’s been tons of discussion (especially among the Cardano community) on whether a native USDC stablecoin will benefit the Cardano ecosystem. Most of the people think that it will bring mass liquidity to the Cardano ecosystem, especially to attract retail & institutions to easily on-ramp fiat USD to USDC on Cardano.
While larger L1 ecosystem such as Ethereum & EVM-Chains have seen large success in achieving high DeFi TVLs with native, fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDT & USDC as the dominant stablecoin, there are also many counter points to say otherwise.
1. List of blockchains that have native USDC / USDT
I’ll start with a table & a list of blockchains that have or do not have native USDC & USDT. I only list 17 blockchains here to simplify my article.
Blockchains WITH native USDC & USDT:
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Ethereum
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Solana
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Avalanche
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Near
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Algorand
Blockchains with EITHER a native USDC or USDT
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Polygon
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Tron
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Hedera
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Tezos
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TON
Blockchains WITHOUT native USDC & USDT
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Binance Smart Chain
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Sui
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Cardano
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MultiversX
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Fantom
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Ergo
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Radix
2. Stablecoin Mkt Cap / TVL Comparison
Rearranging & matching the stablecoin market caps & TVLs according to the blockchains that have USDC and/or USDT (or neither), I have compiled a table & bar chart comparison as shown below:
Chart comparison on the Stablecoin Mkt Cap & TVL between different blockchains & DLTs, in ($). Reference: DeFiLlama 
Table comparison on the Stablecoin Mkt Cap & TVL between different blockchains & DLTs, in ($). Reference: DeFiLlama
Blockchains WITH native USDC & USDT (Stablecoin Mkt Cap / Total TVL [$ million]):
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Ethereum - $81,990.00 / $54,167.00
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Solana - $3,250.00 / $3,655.00
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Avalanche - $1,825.00 / $925.00
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Near - $321.00 / $307.00
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Algorand - $78.50 / $94.41
Blockchains with EITHER a native USDC or USDT
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Polygon - $1,595.00 / $906.00
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Tron - $55,935.00 / $8,344.00
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Hedera - $13.73 / $103.00
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Tezos - $51.51 / $ 63.56
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TON - $(N/A) / $156.00
Blockchains WITHOUT native USDC & USDT
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Binance Smart Chain - $5,167.00 / $8,344.00
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Sui - $343.00 / $589.00
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Cardano - $20.00 / $292.00
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MultiversX - $15.00 / $146.00
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Fantom - $360.00 / $116.00
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Ergo - $0.38 / $6.85
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Radix - $(N/A) / $38.28
Do note that I took all these numbers directly from DeFiLlama, so there might be inaccuracy in the numbers due to some DeFi platforms on these chains are live but not included in their dashboard.
3. Observation & Analysis
For blockchains with native USDT & USDC, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche & Near seems to achieve great success in getting more users to hold stablecoins, as well as TVL numbers go up. Only Algorand doesn’t yield similar positive effects.
For blockchains with either 1 native USDT or USDC, Tron has the biggest success integrating only USDT, ranking 2nd highest in stablecoin market cap due to very low fees & the convenience to send & withdraw USDT in most centralized exchanges. Polygon has great numbers too due to the EVM connection, but Hedera, Tezos & TON do not yield similar positive effects.
For blockchains without native USDT or USDC, Binance Smart Chain has excellent stablecoin market cap & TVL numbers, overtaking even the likes of Polygon, Solana & Avalanche. Even Fantom & Sui has similar numbers with Near without native USDC & USDT. Cardano & MultiversX have similarly low stablecoin market cap, but have > 10x higher TVL, and their numbers are comparable with Tezos, Hedera & TON.
In general, almost all blockchains with EVM compatibility have successes with high TVL numbers & stablecoin market cap, regardless if they have native USDT & USDC. Only Solana is one of the non-EVM blockchain that has similar positive effects. Other blockchains that are non-EVM do not have much positive effects in their TVL & stablecoin market cap.
4. Takeaway
The takeaway from this analysis is:
Native USDC / USDT do not guarantee that you’ll get high liquidity flowing into your ecosystem
The main point of me laying out this article is especially for the other non-EVM blockchain communities to ask themselves if it’s worth paying 8 figures to have USDC or USDT natively integrated, or should these ecosystems have their own native stablecoins (be it fiat-backed, algorithmic or hybrid) with better security, transparency & censorship-resistant properties.
I think what we really need to focus on is to have high quality platforms for users to interact with in the ecosystem. With so many blockchains out there, if your ecosystem only consist of simple DEX, lending, NFT marketplaces, etc that Ethereum & EVM-chains already have, it won’t attract users from other blockchains to your ecosystem because they do not offer anything unique.
For me personally, I’m more of an investor that likes to invest in real-world utilities & use cases with blockchain, while maintaining a high level of decentralization & user security. While high TPS & low fees are essential, they feel secondary to me compared to prioritizing high security, transparency & predictability, which is why Cardano is one of my most favourite blockchain to use, plus other blockchains I found that offer similar guarantees to which i’ll cover them another time.
On stablecoins, I’m always a bit skeptical on the transparency & the censorship properties of USDT & USDC, so even though we have native USDC or USDT, I would much rather park my stables into native stablecoins with better security, transparency & censorship-resistant properties. However, having USDC & USDT as options to diversify the stablecoin portfolio is definitely a good to have, and USDC’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is pretty useful for settling payments in stablecoins that do not rely on selecting the blockchain to transact.
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