Ethena price

🔥Blockchain for stablecoins: The game of Tether, Circle, and Stripe 1/ Who is playing big? There are many names working on blockchain for stablecoins, but currently, the three strongest names in this battle are @Tether_to, @circle, and @stripe. - Plasma + Stable from Tether Plasma and Stable are both Layer 1 solutions, backed by @bitfinex and @paoloardoino (CEO of Tether). Although Tether does not directly invest, @bitfinex and Tether are siblings under the same "mother" - iFinex Inc. + Plasma: Bitcoin sidechain, with a speed of 3k tps, EVM compatible. Specializes in dApps and stablecoin payments, especially $USDT with no fees. + Stable: Independent Layer 1, specializing in $USDT payments. Integrates fiat conversion gateways and provides privacy for businesses. 👉Clearly, @PlasmaFDN is heading towards a public and decentralized model like Ethereum, for building dApps and integrating USDT payments. Meanwhile, Layer 1 @stable focuses on $USDT payments and enterprise-level foreign exchange transactions. Plasma looks promising with the Plasma One application combining the issuance of linked cards with Visa, and integrating DeFi services along with a strategy to attract liquidity using high yields. - Arc from Circle @arc is an L1 blockchain specializing in stablecoin finance (forex, payment, tokenized), using USDC as the gas token. The consensus mechanism is built by the @informalinc team (Cosmos). It has a speed of 3k TPS with 20 validators. EVM compatible for building dApps and has privacy options for enterprise level. 👉It seems that Arc is a combination of Plasma and Stable, and it will leverage the strengths of tools like CCTP to push $USDC. - Tempo from Stripe and Paradigm @tempo is a Layer 1 specializing in stablecoin payments, led by the founder of the @paradigm fund. Highlights: uses any stablecoin as gas, stable gas, supports privacy, EVM compatible, and has a speed of 100k TPS. It is a completely decentralized blockchain, but initially, only partners like Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, Visa,... can participate in running nodes. It will open to the public later. 👉The direction of Tempo may resemble Hyperliquid, and it will be integrated into Stripe's payment system. Tempo (blockchain) is the final piece in Stripe's stablecoin payment system with: SDK (easy integration for customers), partner system, fiat On/Off-ramp (Bridge), wallet (Privy). After Tempo, Stripe may need an end-user app like Plasma One to reach all user demographics. > Among the three forces, I value Tempo the most because it shows the most seriousness, directly led by @matthuang (founder of Paradigm) and directly connected to Stripe's existing system with huge customers. > Additionally, there is another name, Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL). Although it has a quite large vision and thorough research, it is only for organizations, so I won't include it in this article. 2/ Why Blockchain for stablecoins - The stablecoin payment pie is too attractive The trading volume of stablecoins in August reached 2.9 trillion, a figure that is double the trading volume through Visa + Paypal. Moreover, the traditional payment sector has a scale of hundreds of trillions of dollars, and stablecoins are expected to gradually replace that old system. - The fight for survival In the stablecoin payment system, users will pay little attention to which stablecoin they use. Therefore, Tether and Circle must take the lead in controlling the payment system to maintain market share. Stripe must also stay ahead to avoid losing its position in the payment sector. Not to mention, when a payment system has a significant market share, they can use their own stablecoin, and the profits from that are substantial. For instance, USDT or USDC earns several billion dollars each year. If the stablecoin market reaches trillions of dollars, this revenue could be even larger (potentially tens of billions, hundreds of billions each year). 3/ Conclusion Blockchain for stablecoins is a major battle, not only involving Tether, Circle, or Stripe but also many other big players. This battle will begin next season; this phase has just started. While Arc and Tempo are still building, we can temporarily use Plasma. They are heading towards using yield to attract liquidity, then using Plasma One with debit cards to popularize USDT, which is quite interesting. It's also quite regrettable that Meta, despite being ahead of its time, had to shelve Libra (later Diem) since 2019 due to legal issues, causing everything to fall apart. (The above is a personal perspective and may be incorrect; the article is for reference purposes only and is not investment advice.)