Orbital Report: Retail Stablecoin Market Cools Down, but Genuine Payment Traffic Surges

Golden Finance reports that the cross-stablecoin and traditional payment channel payment coordination platform Orbital has released its Q3 stablecoin retail payment index brief. According to reports, the index data is sourced from Artemis, primarily tracking “the adoption speed and quality of stablecoins in retail payments.”

The key findings of the report are as follows:

• Stablecoin deposits surpassed 7 billion USD after the launch of Plasma, setting a record: Plasma launched its native token XPL in Q3. Just three days after launch, the platform’s stablecoin deposits exceeded 7 billion USD, breaking the deposit record for newly launched Layer 1 blockchain networks.

• Binance Smart Chain (BSC) remains the leader in retail transfers but with a 50% slowdown in growth: More mature blockchain networks continue to influence stablecoin retail business in various ways. BNB Chain (BSC) maintains dominance in retail transfers—especially in low-value, high-frequency payment scenarios—but its growth rate slowed by 50% compared to the previous quarter.

• Aptos, which surged in Q2, has entered a plateau period but still maintains high transaction benchmarks in Q3: After experiencing a surge in transaction volume in Q2, Aptos entered a growth plateau in Q3 but continues to maintain high transaction benchmarks.

• Stablecoin retail market cools down, but real payment traffic continues to grow: The stablecoin retail market stabilized in Q3. Following a surge driven by incentive programs and promotional activities in Q2, total transaction counts decreased from 1.33 billion to 1.21 billion in Q3, with daily active users remaining steady at 3.6 million. Despite the cooling market, these figures remain significantly higher than early 2025 levels.