Written by: Oliver, Mars Finance
It's hard to imagine someone robbing your real estate at gunpoint, but if what you own is a string of easily transferable, globally cashable cryptocurrencies, that makes you a perfect walking ATM for criminals. However, risk and opportunity always go hand in hand. For small and medium-sized businesses struggling to survive in global trade, this string of code represents not danger, but the only hope of escaping the high fees and lengthy settlement cycles of the traditional banking system.
Now, this digitally chaotic wilderness filled with raw vigor is meeting a group of 'regular troops' in suits. They are not retail investors looking to strike gold, but payment empires controlling trillions of dollars in global capital flow. In the summer of 2025, the air is thick with the tension and tranquility before the great battle. After PayPal and Robinhood, Stripe and Shopify, two giants that have dominated the traditional world, have finally planted their flags on the land of blockchain.
This is not a simple technological attempt, but a secret war over the control of the future internet's 'settlement layer.' The core weapon of this war is a digital dollar known as 'stablecoin.' And the battlefield is quietly unfolding on the underlying networks referred to as Layer 1 and Layer 2, which users cannot see.
The Silent Gunshot: Rumors of Stripe's L1
On July 7, 2025, an ordinary Monday. Developers and investors in Silicon Valley were stirred by an inconspicuous rumor on the social platform X. Crypto observer @ayyyeandy posted a message:
There are rumors that the payment service provider Stripe plans to launch an L1 blockchain, rather than choosing to build an L2 network like Robinhood. There has been no official confirmation yet, but I've heard this from multiple sources (including offline and private messages). Currently, it's Robinhood against Coinbase, and soon Stripe will join this battle.
The message was short, yet it landed like a stone thrown into a deep pool. In the blockchain world, 'L1' (Layer 1) and 'L2' (Layer 2) are two distinctly different strategic choices. Choosing L2 means building your application on an existing, mature public chain (like Ethereum), akin to driving on a completed highway — convenient but necessitating adherence to the road rules and paying tolls. Robinhood's decision to build on Ethereum's L2 network Arbitrum exemplifies this route.
Choosing L1, on the other hand, is a more difficult and ambitious path. It means starting from scratch to build a completely new, independent blockchain. This is akin to investing in the construction of a brand-new highway and setting all the traffic rules. This move is costly and poses significant technical challenges, but if successful, the builders will have the highest sovereignty over this 'highway' — the validation of transactions, the collection of fees, and the rules of the ecosystem will all be defined by themselves.
Why did Stripe, the payment giant that handled over $817 billion in transactions in 2023, choose this most difficult path?
The answer lies in a recent public comment by Noam Hurwitz, head of engineering at Alchemy. He asserted: 'Stablecoins have become the backbone of internet payments, with adoption rates now surpassing major traditional card networks... becoming the default settlement layer of the internet.'
For Stripe, if the 'default settlement layer' of the internet is built on someone else's L1 public chain, it will forever be just a 'tenant.' Stripe's goal, evidently, is to become the 'landlord' of this new territory. They embraced Bitcoin in 2014, then abandoned it in 2018 due to its volatility and slowness. In 2022, they chose to collaborate with Circle to support the stablecoin USDC it issued. Each step has been extremely cautious. Now, building their own L1 is undoubtedly the most significant move this company has made after recognizing the endgame of stablecoins. They want not just a ticket, but control over the entire table.
Merchant's multiple-choice question
Beyond the grand narrative of Stripe, the first to be touched by this transformation is the capillary network at the very end of global trade.
Isabella is a small business owner living in Madrid, Spain, running a handmade leather goods experience store on the e-commerce platform Shopify. Her customers are worldwide, including many tourists from Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the past, if an Argentine customer wanted to book her class, they needed to pay through traditional credit card networks. This euro payment had to go through Argentine banks, international card organizations (like Visa or Mastercard), Stripe's payment gateway, and finally to Isabella's Spanish bank account.
The entire process takes 3 to 5 days, with each step requiring a 'feathering of the geese,' resulting in a comprehensive fee rate close to 5%. Worse, due to Argentina's strict foreign exchange controls and the wild fluctuations of the peso, the exchange rate losses between the dollar equivalent pesos paid by the client and the euros ultimately received by Isabella are incalculable.
On June 13, 2025, Isabella received an email from Shopify. The email's subject was simple: (Now, receive global payments with USDC).
The email announced that Shopify has officially partnered with Coinbase and Stripe so that merchants can accept payments in USDC stablecoins based on the Base chain (an L2 network launched by Coinbase). The key phrase is: 'Merchants can choose to receive payments in local fiat currency and deposit them directly into their bank accounts without building their own crypto payment infrastructure.'
Following the instructions, Isabella enabled a new payment option in her Shopify backend. A few days later, a new customer from Buenos Aires booked a class. On the payment page, the customer saw a QR code. He scanned it with his digital wallet (like Coinbase Wallet), and the USDC preloaded in his wallet was transferred within seconds.
Almost simultaneously, Isabella's Stripe account shows that an equivalent amount in euros has been credited, with fees of less than 1%. No exchange rate loss, no waiting period. For her, it doesn't matter whether the customer pays in pesos, dollars, or USDC; the process is completely seamless. She doesn't need to understand what 'Base chain' is, nor does she need to manage complicated private keys.
This is the power of the 'Commercial Payment Protocol' jointly launched by Coinbase and Shopify. It completely encapsulates the complexity of cryptocurrency payments in the background. What merchants face are still the familiar fiat currencies and bank accounts. This greatly lowers the adoption threshold.
For Isabella, this is a simple business optimization. But for Coinbase and Stripe, this is a crucial battle for millions of merchants in the new battlefield. Coinbase controls the user side through its Base chain and wallet, while Stripe controls the merchant side through its mature payment settlement network. They are both partners and potential competitors. Today, merchants can receive payments from the Coinbase network through Stripe; tomorrow, when Stripe's own L1 goes live, merchants may be directed to a brand new, more 'efficient' Stripe payment network.
The choice seems to lie in the hands of merchants, but the true rules of the game have long been written by platform giants.
The crossroads of the old and new worlds
The core of this transformation is the 'explosive' adoption rate of stablecoins. According to reports from authoritative data agencies, as of the end of 2024, the annual settlement volume of stablecoins on-chain has reached an astonishing $10 trillion, a figure that has surpassed the annual processing volume of mainstream card organizations like Mastercard.
The entry of giants like PayPal, Stripe, and Shopify is happening against this macro background. They have seen an undeniable trend: money is flowing globally in a whole new way — faster, cheaper, and 24/7 without breaks.
'Stablecoins make money 'cheap, fast, global, and securely transferable,' Noam Hurwitz's statement accurately summarizes its core advantages. These characteristics have made it popular in cross-border payments, gig economy settlements, and even in prediction markets like Polymarket.
However, as the old world's financial giants begin to embrace the underlying technologies of the new world, a profound contradiction also emerges: the conflict between the ideal of decentralization and the commercial reality of centralization.
The birth of Bitcoin was originally aimed at creating a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that is not controlled by any single entity. Now, the issuance rights of stablecoins are highly concentrated in the hands of a few companies (like Circle and Tether), and the gateway to stablecoin payments is firmly controlled by centralized giants like Stripe and Coinbase.
The COO of Shopify stated during the announcement of the partnership that this move will 'help merchants easily meet the global demand for stablecoin payments.' The key word here is 'easily.' To achieve this 'ease,' the system must hide complexity, and the process of hiding complexity itself is a concentration of power. Users and merchants are relinquishing direct control over underlying assets (such as private key management) in exchange for convenience.
This creates a new crossroads. On one hand, blockchain technology indeed addresses the real pain points present in the traditional financial system; on the other hand, the new infrastructure built using this technology seems to be replicating the power structure of the old world, merely replacing banks and card organizations with tech companies.
The Invisible Empire
Back to Isabella in Madrid. Her business is thriving due to the new payment method. She doesn't care whether the payment request is processed through the Base chain or potentially through some future 'Stripe Chain.' What she cares about is the speed of settlement and the transaction fees.
This is precisely the most secretive and profound aspect of this war. It is not a geek debate about the superiority of technology, but a silent revolution regarding commercial infrastructure. As millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of users enjoy the convenience brought by stablecoin payments, the land beneath their feet is quietly changing hands.
Companies like Stripe, Coinbase, and PayPal are building a new global payment network parallel to the traditional banking system. This network has US dollar stablecoins as its lifeblood and blockchain as its skeleton. They are becoming the 'East India Company' of the 21st century, establishing an invisible financial empire made up of codes and protocols.
For ordinary users, it seems that nothing has changed; the payment interface may simply have an additional option. But behind this simple interface, the rules of global capital flow, the distribution of power, and profit are being completely rewritten. This war has no smoke but will determine who the king of internet finance will be in the next decade.
