Ethereum
|5 min ReadStablecoin chains are coming. Does Ethereum still lead?
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The new power move
The quiet giants just got loud. Stablecoin issuers are no longer renting blockspace. They are building their own chains. In August, Circle unveiled Arc. Stripe’s camp pushed Tempo details soon after. Years of payment plumbing now turns into settlement rails. That is a tell. When the money printers build the highway, traffic follows. Fast.
Stablecoin chains live closer to the settlement layer. They make the fee token the stablecoin. Gas becomes predictable. No need to hold a volatile coin just to pay tolls. They ship compliance modules for banks and fintechs. They optimize for transfers, clearing, and cross-currency swaps. This is vertical integration. From issuance to clearing to apps. It is not sexy. It is powerful.
How the chains differ
Arc is Circle’s first native chain. USDC is the gas. Fees are stable. Circle says confirmations in one second are the goal. That fits cross-border payments and large settlements. There is opt-in privacy for enterprise bookkeeping. It is not a toy. It is Circle stepping into financial infrastructure.
Tempo is “payments first.” Stripe and Paradigm helped it bloom. Any stablecoin can be gas. An embedded AMM swaps stables under the hood. Low and predictable fees. Payment notes and whitelists for real-world workflows. The target is 100,000 TPS with sub-second finality. It uses the Reth stack to stay EVM-friendly. Partners include Visa, Deutsche Bank, Shopify, and OpenAI. It looks like an open dollar network, not a single-coin fiefdom.
Stable is the USDT home field. Bitfinex and the USDT team back it. USDT is native gas. Peer-to-peer transfers can be gas-free. It confirms in seconds. It ships batch payouts, compliant private transfers, card rails, and merchant tools. It is EVM-compatible with full SDKs. The focus is simple. Make USDT flow through remittance, merchant acquiring, and institutional clearing.
Plasma is a Bitcoin sidechain. It leans on BTC security and targets stablecoin payments. It brings BTC across a native bridge into EVM. It advertises zero-fee USDT transfers. Developers can choose which token pays gas. Opt-in privacy supports payroll and clearing. It also runs on Reth. In July, Plasma’s
373 million. It was oversubscribed more than seven times. The market cares.Converge fuses RWA and DeFi. It aims for hundred-millisecond blocks. It partners with Arbitrum and Celestia to push performance. It uses USDe and USDtb as gas. It leans on ENA’s CVN for extra protections. DeFi names like Aave, Pendle, and Morpho are in the circle. Securitize-style RWA gets a home. The pitch is clear. Bring big money in safely and fast.
What it means for ETH, SOL, and you
Will these chains sideline Ethereum or Solana. No. They narrow their scope to “money rails.” High-frequency, low-risk flows belong on payment rails with stable gas and clear compliance. That threatens TRON most. TRON’s USDT share is above 99 percent. It is the largest USDT venue today. If Tether’s Stable chain matures, TRON’s core edge erodes.
Critics say a pure payment chain cannot be fully decentralized. If it lets every token and app in, it clogs. If it restricts scope, it centralizes. That is the trade. Which is fine. Because Ethereum and Solana play different games. Ethereum keeps the secure, composable settlement layer for open finance. Solana owns speed and UX for consumer crypto. Payment chains settle certainty. ETH and SOL keep the frontier.
The big trends are visible. Compliance and institutionalization rise. Arc and Stable aim to be bank-grade clearing layers. Multi-stable, low-cost rails like Tempo press Visa and Mastercard from the edges. The market structure shifts. Circle and Tether control nearly 90 percent of stablecoin share today. Neutral chains like Tempo chip at that duopoly. A multipolar map emerges.
Retail still gets a lane. New chains launch with bounties, grants, and liquidity mining. Validator opportunities open for technical users, like ENA-staked participation in Converge. Testnets matter. Arc may open a public testnet this fall. Stable, Plasma, and Tempo testnets are live. Plasma’s $XPL sale was oversubscribed seven times and later tied to a Binance airdrop. The early bird ate.
Here is your blueprint. Follow the money, not the memes. Settlement wins. Liquidity follows certainty. Stablecoin chains shorten the path and smooth the fees. Ethereum and Solana keep the sandbox where new markets are born. Pick your lane. Plant your flag. The next cycle will reward whoever ships rails and captures flow. Miss this, and you will watch others take the yield.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.