The Stable Currency Chain Arms Race: From Plasma, Arc to Tempo, who will take over $2 trillion to pay for the future
By Bernard, ChainCatcher
In 2025, the encryption market, the stabilization currency, is becoming a real hero. By August, USDC had reached $65.2 billion in circulation, and the entire stable currency market had broken the $280 billion mark, with annual transactions reaching $27.6 trillion, exceeding Visa and everything。
Against this background, an arms race around the infrastructure of the zone chain for the stabilization of currencies is taking place in its entirety. Unlike the common public chain, these emerging "stabilized currency chains" are designed to optimize the issuance, payment and settlement of stable currencies, not seeking the integrity of smart contracts, but focusing on making stable currency transactions faster, cheaper and more compliant. From Fintech paid the lead, to Tech and Circle, to a variety of innovative projects such as Codex, 1 Money and Converge, over 10 teams are competing heavily on this track。
Arc: Build an IOS system for stable currency
As the issuer of USDC, Circle officially released the Arc Public Chain on August 12, 2025, unlike other stable currency chains, the unique value of Arc lies in the dual identity advantage of Circle — both as the world's second largest issuer of stable currency and as the "inner" of the traditional financial circle (complete IPO, deep binding with BlackRock, etc.). This identity gives Arc three key advantages:
- Natural advantages of a compliance gene:Circle has been working in depth with regulators like SEC and FinCEN for many years, and Arc is not just adding "filling" compliance on the public chain, but has embedded design from the bottom of the architecture that meets United States regulatory requirements - Arc based on the permissioned PoA model and in line with the EU MiCA and the US GENIUS Act framework. At the same time, Arc's account system also supports the original KYC/AML tag, whereby institutional users can directly verify the counterparty's compliance。
- USDC ORIGINAL:Arc puts USDC as a Gas token, not just as convenient. Traditional public chains require users to purchase original coins such as ETH or SOL before trading, which increases friction costs and exchange rate risks. Arc allows an enterprise to pay all the costs of the chain directly by USDC and achieves the "whatever you see" costing - the cost of the chain that CFO sees is the cost of the dollar, without the need for complex currency conversions. This is significant for listed companies and financial institutions with strict financial compliance requirements。
- Performance:Circle acquired the Malachite Consensus Engine from Informal Systems - a dynamic validation node adjustment was achieved while ensuring that Byzantine was wrong. This means that Arc can switch intelligently between the "high safety mode" (20 nodes, 350 milliseconds certainty) and "high speed mode" (4 nodes, <100 millisecond certainty)。
With the completion of IPO and USDC becoming officially recognized as the United States Stable Currency this year, the Arc Public Chain was launched, demonstrating the desire of the Circle to build a Stable Currency Operating System. Just like apples control mobile ecology through iOS, Circle wants to control the bottom rules of stable currency ecology through Arc. Arc's built-in cross-chain transmission protocols (CCTP) and FX engines are essentially building a global stable currency clearing network. In the future, whatever chain USDC is on, it's going to need final liquidation through Arc, which will upgrade Circle from "Stabilizer" to "Global Digital Dollar Clearing Centre."。
Stable: Tether's institutional moat
Stable, the main force behind Tether's personal run, aimed at the most valuable segment of the USDT ecology -- the institution. Exchanges need to process billions of dollars a day, marketers need to quickly allocate funds between different platforms, and payers need to provide stable settlement services for businesses. The needs of the users of these institutions are completely different from those of the diaspora: they are more concerned with the atomic nature of transactions, privacy protection and compliance auditing than with the cost of a few cents。
With this in mind, Stable designed a unique "business path", which is not just a simple VIP fast track, but a set of solutions tailored to the needs of the institution: a bulk trade package allows thousands of transfers to be processed at once, reducing operating costs; a privacy transaction protects commercially sensitive information and meets business confidentiality needs; and a compliance audit interface automatically generates regulatory reports that simplify the compliance process. These functions may be irrelevant for individual users, but they are a key factor for the agency in deciding whether to move。
The three-stage development road map of Stable also reveals Tether's long-term thinking. The first phase of fast-on-line infrastructureTake USDT as a Gas token and achieve a subsecond out of a blockMarket window period seized; phase IIIntroduction of block space security for enterprise-level paymentsThe third phase focuses on the development of tools and ecology, the construction of ecological moats, and the sunk costs of institutional input on Stable。
Tempo: Pay the giant 'Track Revolution'
Besides Tether and Circle, Fintech paid the giant Stripe and joined forces to launch the Tempo chain, which became the "spoiler" of this competition. The Tempo public chain was officially published on September 4, 2025, and its list of partners is a luxury: Visa, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank in the area of financial services; Openai and Anthropic in the field of technology; and Shopify, DoorDash and Coupang in the electric power company platform. These partners are not only involved in the design of the Tempo public chain, but will also be the first users of the Tempo ecology。
Technically, Tempo has an AMM design that allows users to pay the Gas fee in any stable currency and the system is automatically converted backstage. This "neutrality" prevented Tempo from being tied to any stabilizer and from speculation in original currency。
Last October, Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1 billion, a move that now appears to be paving the way for Tempo. Bridge provides a stable currency infrastructure, along with the wallet developer Privy, who acquired it in June this year, and the Tempo public chain, Stripe has built a complete vertical integration system – from wallet to payment to settlement. Stripe ' s blueprint is to provide end-to-end solutions for businesses, ranging from user payments to business receipts, to complete the entire course in Stripe ' s ecology at manageable cost and consistent experience。
In the past, Stripe used to charge 0.3 per cent of processing fees on the networks of Visa and Mastercard, leaving most of the profits to Visa and Mastercard; now, through Tempo, Stripe is becoming the “pay track” itself, expanding its profit space。
Plasma: Tether-enabled stable currency exclusive chain
Plasma completed $24 million in financing in February 2025, with the participation of Framework Ventures, Bitfinex, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and Peter Thiel. At present, Plasma (XPL) has a public collection price of $0.05 million, with a target financing of $50 million, a forward estimate of $500 million, and a total of $74 million was raised through five rounds of financing. The current market value is approximately $1.36 billion and the total diluted valuation (FDV) is $7.6 billion。
By contrast to Stable, Plasma, although not a public-chain project that Tether officially has personally managed, is often seen as one of Tether’s key-enabled stable-currency-chain projects, thanks to strong support for Tether / Bitfinex-related capital, targeting emerging markets and high-frequency small payment scenarios, emphasizing zero friction experiences to attract dispersed households and Web2 mobile users。
Plasma CEO Paul Faecks revealed a key insight in an interview: The three scenarios of stable currency savings, consumption and global transfers have completely different product logic. Savings users want USDT to generate returns, consumer users care about the experience of zero friction payments, and cross-border transfer users are most concerned with compliance and access access.” The entire design of Plasma was based on this insight. Plasma pioneered a two-certifier system - a group of certifiers was responsible for network security, and another group was dedicated to handling zero Gas charges transfers from USDT. This separation allows Plasma to provide a real zero-cost experience for USDT transfers while ensuring security。
Another advantage of Plasma lies in the original support of the bitcoin. By customizing collaboration with Aave, users can borrow USDT directly as collateral without going through centrally packaged tokens such as WBTC. Plasma's partners include the DeFi agreements Ethena, Aave, Morpho, Curve and Maker. But Faecks made it clear that, although Plasma could run any dApp compatible with the Taifeng, the goal was to target the "squealing" payment industry through the USDT zero-cost payment track。
It is noteworthy that Plasma explicitly excludes functions such as NFT, meme currency and airdrops and focuses on deep integration with traditional payment companies. For example, among the first partners in Plasma, Yellow Card covers 20 African countries with more than 1.5 million live users per month; WalaPay connects remittance networks in labour-exporting countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia; and Maple Finance provides chain credit services for businesses。
Converge: Bridge DeFi and Traditional Finance
The Converge, developed by Ethena Labs and Securitize, was officially announced on March 17, 2025. Compared to other stable currency chains, Converge is trying to address a central issue: how can traditional financial institutions be involved safely and in compliance with DeFi
The biggest innovation of Convergence is its three-layer parallel architecture. The first level is completely unlicensed DeFi, where anyone can freely use USDe to participate in the various DeFi agreements without KYC; the second level is licensed TradeFi, where institutions can use iUSDE and USDtb for compliance transactions after certification by KYC; and the third level is Securitize 's monetized asset layer, which includes credit leverage, fixed-income products and equity transactions. The three floors run in parallel along the same chain, sharing liquidity and separate.
In the adaptation of the ENA token, Converge created an economic closed ring by upgrading the ENA to the authentication node pledge token (sENA): the certifying officer pledged ENA to secure the net while sharing protocol charges. This not only increases the value capture capacity of the ENA, but also transforms the core participants in the Ethena ecology into the stakeholders of the Converge。
The deeper strategic intent of Converge is to redefine "use of the chain." Ethena founder Guy Young divided the block chain into two categories: speculative settlement and asset storage settlement. He believed that the latter would have far greater chances in the next decade than the former. This perception drives Converge into the design of a global asset settlement, a chain that becomes the key infrastructure linking 100 trillion of traditional assets to encryption innovation when traditional national debt, corporate debt, and equity are both present on the Convergence as tokens and participate in DeFi。
Codex: Focused French currency for the Ether
In April 2025, Codex announced the completion of $15.8 million in seed ship financing, with approximately $14 million invested by Dragonfly Capital, and wind investment in Coinbase and Circle. Codex was created by Haonan Li, a former core member of Optimism, Victor Yaw, a family member of the Samling Group of Malaysia, and Momo Ong, a former product manager of Meta。
Haonan Li said in an interview with Fortune Crypto: "It seems to us that neither TPS nor delay is a real bottleneck in the use of stabilization currency. The real bottlenecks are at the border between French and encrypted currency. "Based on this judgment, Codex chooses to build L2 on Optimism, focusing on the exchange of stable currencies, rather than simply upgrading block chain performance. Codex ' s products include " Swap Avenue " , which supports the transfer of stable currency between multiple chains such as Solana, Polygon, Etheum, Tron, etc., with transaction costs uniformly paid by USDC. The service is currently being used by vendors like Wintermute. Codex also plans to introduce T+0 instantaneous French currency clearing, as well as supporting regional stability currencies (such as franc and schilling-backed coins)。
On market strategy, Codex focused on markets in South-East Asia and Africa. The high cost and slow pace of cross-border payments in these areas are natural scenarios for stable currency applications. Codex has introduced institutional-level services in the Philippines, which are planned to be extended to Singapore, the United Kingdom, Dubai and Hong Kong. Especially in African markets, Cordex sees great opportunities, and Chainalysis shows that sub-Saharan Africa received some $125.0 billion in value in the chain between 2023 and 2024. Codex has entered into cooperation with the Canadian Finance in Nigeria and plans to integrate with the hosting platform Blockradar, while Codex has set a target of one quarter of African businesses to stabilize currency flows within a year。
It is worth noting that when Stripe and Paradigm announced in September 2025 that Tempo would be launched, Haonan Li deduced that the new chains were "attacks on the Etherpo". Vitalik forwards and comments "Enjoys to see Codex joins the fight as L2, explicitly considering synergy with the Ether L1 from day one."。
1 Money: net payment network in ungovernable currency
1 Money was created by former Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder and announced in January 2025 more than $20 million in seed ship financing, with investments from 20 institutions such as F-Prime Capital, Galaxy Ventures, Hack VC and Tribe Capital。
The central point of Brian Shroder is, "We can be the cheapest because we don't have our own tokens. So we don't need to transfer gas costs to support the price of speculative assets... and now we can really own the gas costs at a fixed rate." This strategy, which does not have original and governance tokens, contrasts with Stable, which, although Stable does not issue governance tokens, retains gas USDT as a special Gas token, while one Money allows users to pay directly with the stable currency of the transaction。
One Money's alternative is not to support smart contracts. Shroder thinks the settlement time between seconds and 30 minutes is "not working for Starbucks," and "they don't wait until the deal is confirmed." This location makes one money more like a net payment network than a universal block chain platform, and one money chooses a very simple route -- one money completely abandons the complexity of Web3 -- no "tokenomics " , no complex layers of governance, no pledge, no workload proof。
In terms of compliance, 1 Money has been granted 34 United States currency transmission licences and Bermuda BMA Class F licences. The team included former Senior Vice President of Global Operations Binance Matthew Shroder (brother of Brian) as Managing Director, former Deputy General Counsel of OKX Chris Lalan as CLO, former Deputy Binance CO Kristen Hecht as CCO, and former Ripple ISO Brett Enclad as CISO。
The males are deer-by-deer, but the ending isn't the winner
the current competition for a stable currency chain is forming several factions, but classification is not a simple "traditional vs encryption" dichotomy:
- Vertical integration of stabilizers:Circle (Arc), Tether (Stable) directly controls the entire chain from issuance to settlement, with the advantage that existing liquidity - Tether and Circe already account for 86 per cent of the market value of the stable currency. Arc draws institutions on the compliance advantage of Circle, and Stable relies on the dominance of USDT in Asia and emerging markets。
- To pay for the shock of the giant:Tripe (Tempo) enters with mature business networks and payment experience. Stripe handles hundreds of billions of dollars of global payments, and once Tempo is online, it has immediate access to its business systems without the need for an education market。
- (a) Discrepancies of native innovation:Plasma aimed at emerging market and high-frequency small payment scenarios, Codex focused on the French currency exchange border, 1 Money Focused Payment Unregulated Currency, Converge Connected DeFi to TradFi. They do not have an off-the-shelf user base and must find a sub-market that is ignored by the giants。
This pattern of diversification suggests that a stable currency chain market is unlikely to provide a win-win situation and that different projects can serve different needs. Just as there are many agreements and standards coexisting in the Internet age, the future of a stable currency chain will be a pattern of multi-chain and interconnectivity。
However, the deeper contradiction is the dilemma of stabilizing the currency chain. All stable currency chains compete for the same market, but stable currency is essentially a commodity rather than a platform and can be replaced by one another. When the user can transfer USDT from Arc to Tempo in a few seconds, to Solana, where's the public chain moat? Do we really need so many stable money chains? With 57% of the SGP already hosted by the ETA, Tron and Solana split most of the remaining shares, and the costs of these “old chains” have been reduced to a low level. What can the new SGP provide for us
Stabilizing competition in the currency chain is ostensibly a competition for technology and business models and essentially a redistribution of financial power. When Tether earns $13 billion a year with only 150 employees, the old money can't stand by; when 90 per cent of the financial institutions claim to be ready to introduce a stabilization currency, the status of SWIFT is at stake. Circle wants to replace SWIFT with the CCTP protocol, Tether wants to be the Visa Master of Web3, Stripe wants to take his traditional financial advantage to the chain and become the platform-- – The boundaries between traditional finance and digital finance will be blurred as stable currency transactions become simpler and faster. A truly global, instantaneous and low-cost payment network would become a reality. And now we stand at the beginning of this new era。
