The fight for ‘the stablecoin chain’ is about control

The current competition to host the next wave of stablecoin liquidity is less about raw throughput and more about control vs. openness. The field is getting crowded, both with veteran chains like Gnosis, newcomers like Plasma and Neural, and yet-to-be launched app-chains like Arc and Tempo.

First, a reality check. For all the new layer-1 (L1) fanfare, Ethereum still has the lion’s share of stablecoin issuance and liquidity. USDT, USDC, USDE, USDS/DAI, etc, along with most of the real activity in DeFi, all live (or anchor) there. Even as new chains arise, they’ll contend with the gravity of Ethereum’s liquidity and network effects.

The emerging stablecoin-specific blockchains — Arc, Plasma, Tempo, Neura — are designed to challenge that dominance by offering more “purpose-built” architectures. But at their core lies a tension: Do you give issuers control (and with it risk), or preserve an open system that welcomes any stablecoin without asking permission?

Gnosis and the pitch for open rails

In a recent community presentation, Gnosis leadership made their philosophy explicit. They repeatedly contrast a model where a chain backs a single issuer versus one where many issuers and partners can plug in. As business development head Julian Nesk put it, “We’re thinking of Gnosis chain as a B2B platform” and “giving tooling to our partners, which are mostly wallets, that then they will give to the users.”

In short, Gnosis wants to provide the plumbing — liquidity, bridges, DeFi applications — without choosing winners, keeping it aligned with Ethereum’s ethos of neutrality.

For a refresher, Gnosis was founded in 2015 by Martin Köppelmann and Stefan George as one of the first projects built on Ethereum, originally focused on decentralized prediction markets. Over time, it evolved into a broader Ethereum ecosystem player, serving a role a bit like a canary network. For example, Gnosis has consistently adopted Ethereum upgrades — hard forks — in advance of mainnet. Major infrastructure projects such as Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) and CoW Swap originated with Gnosis.

A core argument from Gnosis: Why issue via a chain built by a stablecoin issuer when that issuer can deprioritize you later? They warn that when issuers launch their own chains, partners or smaller issuers may lose access or support. Gnosis frames its neutrality as a safeguard against that centralization trap.

Gnosis also emphasizes a more regional approach to stablecoins, aiming to become “the chain of local currencies” by supporting euro, peso, lira, rand, and more.

“We’re going to be definitely the stablecoin chain, not because we’re going to have the highest circulating supply of US-dollar stablecoins, but because we’ll be the stablecoin with the highest number of local currency stablecoins,” Nest said. That strategy depends heavily on openness: the more issuers and regional variants they integrate, the broader their moat.

Celo has made a similar bid for non-USD stablecoins to Gnosis (not shown) | Source: Blockworks Research

That said, Gnosis acknowledges challenges: Liquidity buildup, bridging, and yield incentives are nontrivial. So far, there has been very little demonstrated demand for non-USD stablecoins. But its pitch is that openness will ultimately win. It is one of the few permissionless L1s explicitly courting multiple teams rather than being tied primarily to one.

Architectures in contrast

Arc is essentially Circle’s attempt to move from “issuer” to “rail operator.” The chain is designed around USDC, as its native gas token, enabling predictable, dollar-denominated fees, and intends to integrate a built-in FX engine and cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) to tie stablecoins together.

The chain is expected to offer deterministic, sub-second finality via a Malachite consensus engine and allows opt-in privacy features. On paper, it looks like a prime test of the Cosmos-inspired app-chain thesis.

Because Circle already controls major stablecoin issuance and infrastructure (USDC, gateways, payments), Arc will begin life with deep liquidity and infrastructure hooks. But that comes with centralization risk: Validators, governance, and incentives may tilt toward Circle-aligned interests.

Arc’s architecture is thus a hybrid: open-source, EVM-compatible, but deeply integrated with an issuer’s stack.

Plasma, which went live on September 25, markets itself as a “stablecoin-native” chain. It touts zero-fee USDT transfers, configurable gas tokens, and support for confidential payments as baseline capabilities. 

While optimized for high volume USDT flows and built for payments, not generalized DeFi, it has nevertheless gained over $13 billion in bridged TVL in its short life, lured by significant liquidity incentives of the chain’s XPL token. But again, liquidity is concentrated in one stablecoin, and non-USDT issuers may find limited support. The tradeoff: excellent performance and low friction for USDT traffic, but a narrower ecosystem.

Tempo, backed by Stripe and built with Paradigm, has surfaced as a payments-first chain that’s yet to launch. Technical details are slim, but it aims for sub-second finality, a stablecoin-agnostic gas model, and tight integration with merchant payment flows. 

It will be interesting to see what stablecoins it targets for adoption.

Neura is more speculative and vertically ambitious: It envisions owning hardware, protocol-level revenue (RPC, MEV / OEV), and “gas-free” transfers for its native stablecoin. It aims to capture yield flows along with settlement. But it’s going to have a lot of competition, and this latest incarnation of Near represents a pivot from an “AI chain” originally pitched by the Ankr team in 2024.

Non-USD volume remains modest onchain (USD hidden above) | Source: Blockworks Research

What separates Gnosis from these challengers is its insistence on openness. Gnosis effectively bets that the next wave of stablecoin adoption will come from diversity, not dominance. If many local-currency stables, cross-border remittance tokens, regional FX bridges, and stablecoin partners emerge, the network that welcomes them without gatekeeping may have an edge. 

Even as these stablecoin chains battle, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) remains the standard. No matter how optimized Arc or Plasma become, their stablecoins will likely still reside mainly on Ethereum mainnet, just as USDT does today (with Tron a close second). That inertia is immense.

Gnosis’s path to success is much steeper. Its openness is on par with any L1, but it must demonstrate yield, adoption, bridging, performance, and stability equal to the upstarts. If liquidity flows begin to prefer Arc’s guaranteed performance or Plasma’s zero-fee transfers, Gnosis may lean harder into diversity.

In narrative terms, this is not just a performance arms race — it’s a fight over who controls the rails of programmable money. Will stablecoins inhabit a world of corporate-owned rails or public goods that anyone can access? Watch this space.

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