Stripe, Circle, and Tether are each building proprietary blockchains—Tempo, Arc, and Plasma respectively—to move stablecoins, raising over $1 billion combined. These “stablechains” aim to cut fees, control settlement, and comply with the GENIUS Act and MiCA as monthly stablecoin transfer volume tops $5.4 trillion. While cheaper rails benefit users, the shift risks undermining Ethereum and Tron dominance and further fragmenting liquidity.
The battle over stablecoin settlement is turning into a full-on infrastructural arms race according to CoinMarketCap. Stripe, Circle, and Tether are each working on their own blockchains exclusively to move digital dollars.
Stripe is building Tempo, a payments chain created in partnership that will support Stripe’s USDC acquiring and global payout network. Circle has introduced Arc, an open Layer-1 blockchain designed for USDC as its main token, offering less-than-a-second finality for business settlement.
Tether is supporting Plasma, a Bitcoin-anchored chain that aims to scale up fee-free transfers of USDT in emerging markets. The supply of stablecoins has crossed $270 billion, with more than $5.4 trillion in monthly adjusted transfer volume during 2025.
Established players currently pay significant rent to general-purpose chains while experiencing negative miner extractable value, congestion, and liquidity fragmentation. With a proprietary chain, a player can earn sequencing fees, implement compliance controls, and leverage an interoperability advantage as the GENIUS Act and MiCA set out their expectations for issuance and settlement under regulation.
For developers, exchanges, and institutional players, stablecoins are supposed to offer cheaper and regulated routes, but a further fragmentation of liquidity and standards is a potential risk. The 90% of these coins volume currently settled on Ethereum, Tron, and Solana would be impacted by declining gas fees, while interoperability protocols like LayerZero or Circle’s CCTP grow in importance.
