Strip, Circle, and Tether have successively launched dedicated chains. What impact will this have on Ethereum and L2?
Regarding Stripe, Circle, and Tether’s successive launches of dedicated blockchains, I would like to offer two perspectives:
1) Impact on Ethereum Layer 2:
Layer 2s are all working hard to inherit the security of the main network more safely, but they have overlooked the fact that the core demand of large customers such as Stripe, Circle, and Tether, which can truly bring about the development of Mass Adoption to L2s, is not decentralized security, but full-stack control from coin minting to settlement.
Furthermore, Sequencer revenue, MEV, and gas fees—real commercial benefits that are already pocketed by the Sequencer itself—make no sense for L2 to take a share. More importantly, when regulatory inquiries or urgent compliance issues arise, a dedicated chain can more quickly and efficiently meet TradFi's risk management requirements.
This incident is another blow to Ethereum's Layer 2 strategy. L2 originally hoped to attract real users and transaction volume through stablecoins and RWA assets, but these asset issuers have bypassed them. Ironically, the more "orthodox" L2 becomes technically, the less commercially appealing it becomes. These technological innovations seemingly address issues of concern to the Ethereum community, but they aren't the pain points of stablecoin issuers.
2) Impact on the Ethereum mainnet:
The impact on the Ethereum mainnet depends on one's perspective. In my view, the dedicated chains developed by major stablecoin companies are essentially creating efficient payment and settlement layers, which solidifies Ethereum's position as the global financial settlement layer. These dedicated chains can indeed optimize the throughput and latency of peer-to-peer payments, but they lack true interoperability. Complex financial operations across multiple assets require the atomicity and composability that can only be achieved within Ethereum's unified state machine.
Crucially, innovation in the DeFi derivatives market relies on permissionless liquidity aggregation. For example, Uniswap V4's Hook mechanism, Aave's cross-pool risk management, and GMX's synthetic asset model all require access to multiple sources of liquidity. This obviously cannot generate synergy on a closed stablecoin chain, and naturally cannot fully realize the innovative charm that does not require DeFi infrastructure.
Therefore, Ethereum will eventually play a dual role: both a neutral settlement layer between these proprietary chains (similar to SWIFT's clearing function) and a base layer for DeFi innovation (providing the composability of complex financial products).
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