Product Keynote: Artemis (Jon Ma)

In a room hungry for alpha, Artemis CEO Jon Ma delivered exactly what the Breakpoint 2025 audience came for: concrete evidence that Solana is winning the blockchain payments war. The reveal? Solana now accounts for approximately 5-6% of all B2B payments happening on-chain—a figure previously impossible to track and being unveiled for the first time at this conference.

Summary

Artemis, a fintech and stablecoin data company serving industry giants like Tether, Circle, Visa, and PayPal, has cracked one of crypto's most challenging analytical problems: measuring real payment volume on blockchain networks. While traditional fintech companies like Stripe can easily report their annual payment volumes (currently $1.4 trillion), the crypto industry has struggled to separate genuine payment activity from the noise of DeFi trading, airdrops, and MEV transactions.

The company's methodology represents a breakthrough in blockchain analytics. By working directly with payment service providers, exchanges, and stablecoin players on the ground, Artemis has developed a framework to calculate what they call Total Payment Volume (TPV)—a metric borrowed from the traditional fintech world and adapted for on-chain activity. This approach filters out non-payment activities to reveal the true scale of blockchain-based commerce.

The implications are significant for Solana's positioning in the payments space. With partnerships recently announced with Cash App ($280 billion annual volume) and Western Union ($150 billion annual volume), having verifiable data to track payment growth becomes essential. Artemis's research shows that B2B payments on-chain are growing nearly 4x year-over-year, with approximately $120 billion in total payment volume moving through blockchain networks.

Key Points:

The Challenge of Measuring Real Payment Volume On-Chain

One of the biggest obstacles in demonstrating blockchain's payment utility has been the inability to separate legitimate payment activity from other on-chain transactions. When you look at raw blockchain data, it's impossible to distinguish a genuine cross-border business payment from a DeFi swap or an airdrop distribution. This lack of clarity has made it difficult for the industry to make credible claims about adoption and growth in the payments sector.

Artemis has addressed this challenge by building relationships with the actual participants in the payment ecosystem—payment service providers, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers. By combining on-chain data with off-chain context from these partners, they've created what appears to be the only comprehensive methodology for calculating true payment volume on blockchain networks. This ground-level approach provides accuracy that pure on-chain analytics cannot achieve.

Artemis's Total Payment Volume Methodology

The company's methodology categorizes legitimate payment activity into several distinct buckets: payroll disbursements, cross-border payments, domestic transfers, card processor volumes, and peer-to-peer transactions. These categories represent real economic activity where stablecoins and blockchain technology are being used for their intended purpose—moving value between parties efficiently.

Conversely, the methodology explicitly excludes activities that inflate volume figures but don't represent genuine payments. DeFi trading, airdrops, and MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) transactions are filtered out. This distinction is crucial because raw stablecoin transfer data can be misleading—the same dollars might be counted multiple times as they flow through various DeFi protocols, creating an inflated picture of actual economic activity.

Solana's 5-6% Share of B2B Payments

The headline revelation from Ma's presentation is that Solana has captured approximately 5-6% of all B2B payments happening on blockchain networks. While this might seem like a modest percentage, it represents a significant achievement for a network competing against established players like Ethereum and Tron in the stablecoin space. B2B payments are particularly valuable because they tend to involve larger transaction sizes and represent enterprise-level adoption.

This data point becomes even more meaningful when considering the growth trajectory. With B2B payments growing nearly 4x year-over-year according to Artemis's research, Solana's share could translate into substantial absolute volumes as the overall market expands. The network's technical advantages—high speed, low costs, and reliable finality—position it well to capture an increasing share of this growth.

Upcoming Dashboard and Industry Impact

Artemis announced plans to launch an official dashboard in Q1 2025 that will allow anyone to track real payment volume across different blockchain networks. This transparency could fundamentally change how the industry discusses and compares blockchain payment adoption. Instead of relying on raw transfer volumes or anecdotal evidence, stakeholders will have access to rigorous, standardized metrics.

For Solana specifically, this dashboard could serve as a powerful tool for demonstrating the network's value proposition in payments. As partnerships with Cash App and Western Union mature and begin generating volume, the ability to publicly track that growth provides credibility that marketing claims alone cannot achieve. It also creates accountability, ensuring that announced partnerships translate into actual on-chain activity.

Facts + Figures

• Solana currently represents approximately 5-6% of all B2B payments happening on-chain—revealed for the first time at Breakpoint 2025

• Approximately $120 billion in payment volume is happening on blockchain networks, according to Artemis research from fall 2024

• B2B payments on-chain are growing nearly 4x year-over-year, making it the fastest-growing payment category

• Stripe processes approximately $1.4 trillion per year in total payment volume, serving as a benchmark for the industry

• Cash App, which recently partnered with Solana, processes $280 billion in volume annually

• Western Union, another new Solana partner, handles $150 billion in annual volume

• Artemis serves major industry players including Tether, Circle, Visa, and PayPal

• Artemis claims to be the only data provider globally that calculates real payment volume on-chain through direct partnerships with payment providers

• A new payment tracking dashboard will launch in Q1 2025

• Existing research is available at stablecoin.fyi

Top Quotes

• "Who's ready for some alpha?"

• "How do we actually know that Solana is winning in payments?"

• "The secret is you cannot get it on chain."

• "Artemis, we're the only data provider in the whole world where we work with payment service providers, exchanges on the ground, stablecoin players to calculate how much of volume on chain is actually real payments."

• "B2B payments is growing the fastest nearly 4X year on year."

• "First unveiled here at Breakpoint, if you look at Solana today, this fall, Solana is approximately 5% to 6% of all B2B payments that are happening on chain."

• "The Western Union CEO was saying, hey, look, we ended up picking Solana because they were just the right choice."

• "In order to see that Solana is actually winning this war and winning payments and a lot of real activity is moving on chain, the only way to do that is with TPV."

Questions Answered

How can we tell if Solana is actually winning in blockchain payments?

The key metric is Total Payment Volume (TPV), which measures real payment activity rather than raw transaction data. Artemis has developed a methodology that separates genuine payments—like payroll, cross-border transfers, and B2B transactions—from noise like DeFi trading and airdrops. Their data shows Solana captures 5-6% of B2B payments on-chain, providing concrete evidence of the network's growing role in actual commerce rather than speculation.

What percentage of on-chain payments does Solana handle?

According to Artemis's research unveiled at Breakpoint 2025, Solana accounts for approximately 5-6% of all B2B payments happening on blockchain networks. This figure specifically measures legitimate business-to-business payment activity and excludes DeFi transactions, trading, and other non-payment activities. The B2B segment is particularly significant because it's growing nearly 4x year-over-year.

How much stablecoin payment volume is happening on blockchain networks?

Artemis estimates approximately $120 billion in actual payment volume is occurring on-chain. This figure represents filtered data that excludes DeFi activity, airdrops, and MEV—focusing only on genuine payment use cases like payroll, cross-border transfers, domestic payments, and peer-to-peer transactions. For context, this is compared against traditional fintech benchmarks like Stripe's $1.4 trillion annual volume.

Why is measuring real payment volume on-chain so difficult?

On-chain data alone cannot distinguish between different types of transactions. A $10,000 stablecoin transfer could be a legitimate business payment, a DeFi swap, part of an airdrop distribution, or MEV activity. Artemis solves this by partnering directly with payment service providers, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers who have the off-chain context needed to classify transactions accurately. They claim to be the only data provider globally with this capability.

Which type of blockchain payment is growing fastest?

B2B payments are experiencing the fastest growth in the blockchain payment space, increasing nearly 4x year-over-year according to Artemis's data. This growth reflects increasing enterprise adoption of stablecoins for business transactions, particularly in cross-border commerce where blockchain offers speed and cost advantages over traditional banking rails.

When will there be public data on blockchain payment volumes?

Artemis announced plans to launch an official dashboard in Q1 2025 that will allow anyone to track real payment volume across different blockchain networks. This will provide standardized, transparent metrics for comparing payment adoption across chains. Some research is already available at stablecoin.fyi, including the fall 2024 report on total payment volume.