Explainers
Where stablecoin supply lives: by mechanism and by chain
This site’s filtered copy of DefiLlama’s stablecoin table, committed on 3 October 2026, holds 48 coins with at least $100M outstanding each, and $310B between them. Read as one table it shows three things and has one limit: two coins hold 83.3% of that supply, coins DefiLlama labels fiat-backed hold 91.9%, and two chains carry 77.6% of it (each share computed); the limit is that none of these figures says what backs a coin or whether it can be redeemed.
The total, and how few issuers hold it
Every figure here comes from the snapshot behind the stablecoin data pages, which list each coin with its supply, peg, mechanism and 30-day change. The set is every stablecoin DefiLlama lists with at least $100M outstanding and a dollar figure (see By peg), and on the snapshot date all 48 cleared that line, the smallest, Frax USD (FRXUSD), with $103M. The total and every share below are therefore shares of stablecoins above $100M, not of the whole market: coins under the line are not in the table, and nothing here says how much they hold.
Supply means what the data pages mean by it: the amount an issuer has outstanding across the chains where the coin is minted. The site’s import counts each token of a dollar-pegged coin as one dollar, and converts a coin pegged to another currency at the last price DefiLlama records for it. Shares and other derived figures are computed from the coin-level figures, and the first in each section is marked as computed.
Tether (USDT) had $184.0B outstanding and USD Coin (USDC) $74.2B: 59.4% and 23.9% of the table, and 83.3% together (computed against $310B). Sky Dollar (USDS) at $6.8B, Ethena USDe at $4.9B and Dai at $4.8B take the top five to 88.6%. The other 43 coins hold $35.2B between them, 11.4%.
A fiat-backed coin holds its peg, as what holds each kind of peg sets out, because a token can be redeemed with the issuer, and the arbitrage that keeps its market price at par depends on that redemption being credible. Both of the two largest coins carry DefiLlama’s fiat-backed label, so the redemption promise behind 83.3% of the table’s supply is made by two issuers, each on its own terms and against its own reserves.
Two things follow from the arithmetic alone, without any view of the issuers themselves. Redemption capacity is not pooled. A stablecoin is a claim on whoever stands behind it, so what stands behind 59.4% of the table is one issuer’s reserves and redemption process, and behind another 23.9% a second issuer’s. Policy is concentrated in the same way: a change either issuer makes to who may redeem, or on what terms, or a rule that applies to either of them, reaches that issuer’s whole share of the table at once. The table records the concentration. It says nothing about how either issuer meets redemptions.
By mechanism
DefiLlama gives each coin one mechanism label, and the snapshot uses three: fiat-backed, crypto-backed and algorithmic, spelt here as the record spells them. The plain-English line beside each is the general design as the stablecoin explainer describes it, where each design’s way of holding and of failing is set out in full. The snapshot carries the label and nothing about any coin’s reserves or collateral, and this piece has not checked any label against an issuer’s own documents.
- fiat-backed. An issuer holds reserves and commits to redeeming tokens for currency. 28 coins, $285B, 91.9% of the table (computed).
- crypto-backed. The token is backed by crypto collateral; in the design the explainer describes, more collateral is locked than the tokens are worth and a position is liquidated if it falls too far. 19 coins, $24.9B, 8.0%.
- algorithmic. The peg is held by an arbitrage loop against a second, floating token rather than by reserves or collateral. One coin, Frax (FRAX), with $153M, a share that rounds to 0.0% at one decimal place.
The fiat-backed share is mostly the two largest coins: Tether and USD Coin are 90.6% of it. Set them aside and the other 26 fiat-backed coins hold $26.7B, against $24.9B for the 19 crypto-backed ones. Three of the top five coins are crypto-backed, Sky Dollar, Ethena USDe and Dai, and they hold $16.5B between them, 66.4% of the crypto-backed total.
By peg
DefiLlama records the currency each coin targets as its peg type, and two appear in the table: peggedUSD, the US dollar, and peggedEUR, the euro. 46 coins target the dollar, with $309B, 99.8% of the table (computed). Two target the euro, EURC with $536M and EUR CoinVertible (EURCV) with $209M, $746M together and 0.2%. Both carry the fiat-backed label.
The euro figures are dollar values, converted as described above, so each moves with the exchange rate as well as with the number of tokens outstanding. The 30-day changes do not: the site’s import measures them in tokens, and both coins had more outstanding than a month earlier, EURC by 6.2% and EURCV by 5.8%.
A coin pegged to the euro does for the euro what a dollar coin does for the dollar. Its target is a fixed value in that currency, so a holder who keeps accounts in euros holds a token measured in the same unit, with no dollar exchange rate between the two.
In this table the euro is small and no other currency appears. That absence is scoped to the table. Besides the floor, the site’s import leaves out any coin not pegged to the dollar for which DefiLlama gives no price, because without one there is no dollar figure to publish, so a coin of that kind would be missing at any size.
By chain
DefiLlama records each coin’s supply chain by chain, and this section adds those figures up by chain. A coin issued on several chains is counted on each of them for the part issued there: Tether’s $92.7B on Tron counts towards Tron and its $73.4B on Ethereum towards Ethereum. The pieces add back to the table’s $310B (computed), so no coin is counted twice. 147 chain labels appear, and 41 of the 48 coins are on more than one chain.
These are chain totals among stablecoins above $100M. They are not the stablecoin figure on the chain data pages, which comes from a separate DefiLlama feed of per-chain totals, without this table’s floor. The two are built differently and are not comparable.
| Chain | Supply | Share of table | Coins | Largest coin, share of chain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | $146.4B | 47.2% | 40 | Tether, 50.2% |
| Tron | $94.2B | 30.4% | 8 | Tether, 98.4% |
| Solana | $16.8B | 5.4% | 26 | USD Coin, 44.5% |
| BSC | $16.5B | 5.3% | 23 | Tether, 55.6% |
| Hyperliquid L1 | $7.4B | 2.4% | 6 | USD Coin, 99.0% |
| Base | $5.1B | 1.6% | 13 | USD Coin, 86.2% |
| Arbitrum | $4.1B | 1.3% | 21 | USD Coin, 57.7% |
| Polygon | $3.4B | 1.1% | 14 | USD Coin, 47.9% |
| X Layer | $1.6B | 0.5% | 7 | Global Dollar, 91.4% |
| Avalanche | $1.5B | 0.5% | 17 | BlackRock USD, 32.5% |
Both share columns are computed from the per-chain figures; “Coins” counts the coins with any supply on the chain.
Ethereum and Tron carry 77.6% of the table between them and the ten chains above 95.8%; the other 137 chain labels share $13.1B, 4.2%. Tether has 50.4% of its supply on Tron and 39.9% on Ethereum, and USD Coin 61.3% of its supply on Ethereum.
The chains also differ in how many coins they carry. On Ethereum, with 40, the two largest, Tether and USD Coin, hold 81.3% of the chain’s total. Tron carries eight, and on Tron, Hyperliquid L1 and X Layer a single coin holds more than nine-tenths of the chain’s total.
Two explanations are possible, and the table can confirm neither. The first is that some chains are used mainly to move a stablecoin from one holder to another, as a payments rail, so that supply sits there to be sent. The second is that other chains are used mainly for DeFi, where stablecoins serve as collateral, loan assets and trading pairs, so that supply sits there to be put into contracts. Others are possible too, among them where an issuer chose to mint and where large holders keep their balances. The table records balances by chain on one date. It records no transactions and nothing about what a balance is used for, so it cannot tell a payments chain from a DeFi chain.
What moved in the last 30 days
The snapshot gives each coin’s change in supply over 30 days, measured in tokens outstanding, which for a dollar-pegged coin is a change in dollars. 46 coins have a comparison, and two, USDD and Open USD, do not. Of the 46, 22 rose, 17 fell and seven were unchanged at one decimal place. The six largest moves in percentage terms:
| Stablecoin | 30-day change | Supply | Mechanism | Change in $ (computed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USD.AI | +38.7% | $0.3B | crypto-backed | +$89M |
| Falcon USD | +26.4% | $1.5B | crypto-backed | +$310M |
| Re Protocol reUSD | +26.3% | $0.3B | crypto-backed | +$59M |
| United Stables | +22.6% | $1.6B | crypto-backed | +$287M |
| BlackRock USD | -18.5% | $2.2B | fiat-backed | -$510M |
| Ethena USDe | +15.3% | $4.9B | crypto-backed | +$649M |
Five of the six are crypto-backed. The snapshot carries the percentage and the current supply, not the supply a month earlier, so the dollar change is computed from the two: current supply less current supply divided by one plus the change. It is approximate, since the percentage is rounded to one decimal place.
The same arithmetic run on the largest coins shows what a percentage leaves out. Tether’s 0.4% comes to about $733M and USD Coin’s 0.5% to about $369M, so Tether’s move added more dollars than five of the six above, and about as many as Ethena USDe’s. Ranked by dollars instead, the largest moves among dollar-pegged coins were Tether (+$733M), Ethena USDe (+$649M), BlackRock USD (-$510M), USD Coin (+$369M), Falcon USD (+$310M) and Circle USYC (-$306M) (the first two are within rounding of each other). A percentage measures a coin against its own size a month ago; the dollar change measures what the move did to the table.
A 30-day change also compares two dates and nothing between them. USD.AI’s seven-day change in the same snapshot is +50.5%, larger than its 30-day change, so its supply a week before the snapshot was lower than a month before (computed from the two percentages). Supply rises when more tokens are issued than redeemed or burned, and falls when the reverse holds; the table gives no reason for any of these moves.
What supply cannot tell you
Reserves. For a fiat-backed coin, supply counts the tokens an issuer has committed to redeem. What it holds against them is a separate figure, and the snapshot does not carry it. The data pages list audit and attestation links where DefiLlama records them, with a note that Cryptonist has not verified them, and what proof of reserves actually proves sets out how narrow such a document can be: assets at one moment, its value resting substantially on an independent signature and on how often, and how unpredictably, it is repeated.
Redemption. Who may redeem, above what size, and whether redemptions are being met on a given day are not in the table either. A coin’s data page gives the issuer’s stated mint-and-redeem process where DefiLlama records one. Tether’s page records that customers who have undergone a verification process can exchange dollars for USDT and redeem USDT for dollars. A stated process is a description, not a record of how redemptions are going.
The peg. Supply is not the peg. The data pages’ own note is that supply can fall because holders redeemed in an orderly way or because they fled, and that the figure alone cannot distinguish the two; a steady supply says nothing on its own about whether a coin is holding its target. When a token slips, the stablecoin explainer’s question is whether it can still be redeemed, and by whom, and a supply table cannot answer it.
The rules. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation treats a token pegged to a single official currency as an e-money token, and two of its rules bear on what a holder of one can expect. Under Article 49 a holder may demand redemption from the issuer at any time and at par value, as the stablecoin explainer sets out. Under Article 50 the issuer may not grant interest on the token, and neither may a crypto-asset service provider providing services related to it, which where crypto yield comes from covers with the matching provision for asset-referenced tokens. The rules attach to tokens issued under that regime, which, as the explainer also notes, is not all of them. The snapshot has no field for regulatory status, so it cannot say which of the 48 coins they reach.
The stablecoin data pages carry each coin’s supply, chains and history as of 3 October 2026, with the same note on what the figure leaves out.