Over the past twelve months, stablecoins' on-chain activity has increased by 800%, a study by TokenAnalyst reveals.

The stablecoin market has grown significantly recently: the total capitalization of all stablecoins is in fact only lower than that of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), and higher than that of XRP (XRP). In the last year, as many as 290 billion dollars in stablecoins have been moved on-chain: in March a value of 50.9 billion was transferred, a truly remarkable increase compared to the 6.2 billion of April 2019.

Dai is the most decentralized stablecoin Despite the growth of the DeFi industry, over half of the on-chain activities are linked to centralized exchanges. In particular, the exchange activity is five times higher than that of the DeFi platforms.

The report mainly examines three stablecoins: Tether (USDT), USDC (USDC) and Dai (DAI). The latter is by far the most decentralized, given that 88% of its on-chain activity is linked to DeFi platforms. By contrast, 62% of Tether's business is done on centralized exchanges.

The wide availability and variety of stablecoins is very useful for cryptocurrency investors, as it allows them to protect the value of the assets during periods of strong volatility. Selling for traditional money is a valid alternative, but thanks to stablecoins it is not necessary to go out and re-enter the world of cryptocurrencies, a process that could be expensive and inconvenient.