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PayPal expands PYUSD stablecoin to Solana blockchain for faster, cheaper transactions
TLDR
- PayPal has expanded its stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), to the Solana blockchain, making it available on both the Ethereum and Solana networks.
- The move aims to make PYUSD faster and cheaper to use, leveraging Solana’s high transaction speeds and low costs, ideal for commerce and payments use cases.
- PayPal and Venmo wallet users will have a chain-agnostic experience, with unified PYUSD balances regardless of the network holding the assets.
- Crypto.com, Phantom, and Paxos are among the first platforms to offer PYUSD on Solana, enabling a seamless fiat-to-crypto experience for consumers and businesses.
- The expansion of PYUSD to Solana aligns with PayPal’s goal of promoting mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while providing a simple and secure way to send money at a lower cost.
PayPal, the global payments giant, announced an expansion of its stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), onto the Solana blockchain.
This move marks PayPal’s first venture beyond the Ethereum ecosystem and aims to make PYUSD faster and cheaper to use for its growing user base.
By making PYUSD available on Solana, PayPal is taking advantage of blockchain’s high transaction speeds and extremely low costs, which are particularly advantageous for commerce and payments use cases.
Solana is known for processing up to 65,000 transactions per second at minimum fees of $0.0025, significantly surpassing Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second with higher fees that can range from $1 to $50 during periods of network congestion .
Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of PayPal’s Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Digital Currency Group, highlighted the company’s goal of enabling a digital currency with stable value designed for commerce and payments. “Making PYUSD available on the Solana blockchain furthers our mission,” he said.
PayPal and Venmo wallet users will enjoy a chain-agnostic experience, with unified PYUSD balances regardless of the network holding the assets. This means that users can seamlessly transfer PYUSD between Ethereum and Solana, depending on their preferences and needs.
Several platforms, including Crypto.com, Phantom, and Paxos, are among the first to offer PYUSD on Solana, enabling a seamless fiat-to-crypto experience for both consumers and businesses.
This expansion aligns with PayPal’s goal of promoting mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while providing a simple and secure way to send money at a lower cost.
Solana emerged as the most used blockchain for stablecoin transfers, with data from analytics platform Artemis showing that stablecoin transfer volume on Solana has reached $1.5 trillion over the past year, surpassing Ethereum’s volume of 885 billion dollars over the same period.
However, the Solana network has faced challenges, mainly related to recurring network outages.
To address these issues, an update called Firedancer will be released in the coming months, aiming to increase Solana’s overall reliability and scalability.
PayPal initially launched PYUSD in August 2023 in partnership with Paxos Trust Company.
The stablecoin, backed by US dollar deposits, short-term Treasury securities and cash equivalents, was initially issued only on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token.