PayPal’s José Fernández says Ethereum is not the best solution for payments

PayPal’s Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies business unit head, José Fernández da Ponte, confirmed that the international online payment system launch on Solana was prompted by shortcomings on the Ethereum network. Fernández said Ethereum is not the best platform to offer payment solutions.

PayPal’s Vice President of the Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies, José Fernández, confirmed that Paypal’s preferred network for the launch was Solana. He said Ethereum was not the best solution for payments. 

The launch on Solana references the network’s advantage over Ethereum. Solana can accommodate token extensions while offering high transaction speeds of up to 1,000 transactions per second at relatively lower costs than Ethereum.

PayPal launches PYUSD on Solana

On May 29th, PayPal released a press statement announcing the launch of stablecoin PYUSD on the Solana blockchain. According to the announcement, PayPal’s decision to launch PYUSD on Solana narrowed the network’s ability to process “massive amounts of transactions at high speeds with extremely low costs.”

GM of Payments at the Solana Foundation, Sheraz Shere, also hailed Solana’s network speeds and scalability features for providing the ideal blockchain for payment solutions.

“The Solana network’s speed and scalability make it the ideal blockchain for new payment solutions that are accessible, cost-effective, and instantaneous.”

Sheraz Shere

On June 30th, PayPal announced the first Global PYUSD Portal Hackathon. The project, built on the Solana network, was developed in collaboration between PayPal and Portal. 

The Global PYUSD Portal Hackathon aimed to distribute 40,000 PYUSD (equivalent to $40,000) in prizes to 6 hackathon winners, with the grand champion walking away with 15,000 PYUSD equivalent to $15,000. The winners will be showcased at the Solana Hacker House in Hong Kong from 24th to 26th October 2024.

TrueX exchange to use PYUSD instead of USDC

The news comes after two former Coinbase employees, Vishal Gupta, and Patrick McCreary, launched the TrueX exchange using PYUSD. TrueX exchange revealed that it chose PYUSD over the widely used USDC that Gupta participated in developing while working at Coinbase.

According to data from DeFiLlama, the supply of PYUSD on the Solana blockchain exceeds that of Ethereum’s PYUSD stablecoin supply. Ethereum holds 49.8%, or about $364.66 million, of the total PYUSD supply, while Solana holds 50.2%, or approximately $367.54 million.

According to PayPal, PYUSD is a collateralized stablecoin whose reserves are backed by US dollar deposits, cash equivalents, and U.S. Treasury Bonds. The stablecoin is pegged to the US dollar in the ratio of 1:1 and is available for transactions on the PayPal and Venmo platforms.

According to data from Coinmarketcap, PYUSD currently ranks fifth among the largest stablecoins in terms of market capitalization. The stablecoin has a market cap of $732,061,918 and a 24-hour trading volume of $32,043,723 at the time of this publication.