Regarding the exclusive chains launched by Strip, Circle, and Tether, here are two viewpoints:
1) Impact on Ethereum Layer 2:
Layer 2s are all striving to inherit the security of the mainnet more safely, but they overlook a fact: the core demand from major clients like Strip, Circle, and Tether that can truly bring mass adoption to L2s is not decentralized security, but full-stack control from minting to settlement.
Moreover, the commercial interests of Sequencer revenue, MEV, and gas fees, which can be fully pocketed, provide no reason to share a piece of the pie with L2. More importantly, when regulatory inquiries arise or urgent 'compliance' issues need to be addressed, creating exclusive chains can obviously meet TradFi's risk control requirements more quickly and efficiently.
Therefore, this is definitely another blow to the Ethereum Layer 2 strategy. L2 originally hoped to attract real users and trading volume through stablecoins and RWA assets, but these asset issuers bypassed them directly. Ironically, it seems that the more 'orthodox' L2 is technically, the less attractive it becomes commercially, because these technical innovations seem to address the issues that the Ethereum community cares about, but are not the pain points for stablecoin issuers.
2) Impact on Ethereum Mainnet:
The impact on the Ethereum mainnet depends on the perspective. In my view, the stablecoin giants creating exclusive chains are actually establishing an efficient payment settlement layer, which reinforces Ethereum's position as a global financial settlement layer. These dedicated chains can indeed optimize the throughput and latency of peer-to-peer payments, but they lack true interoperability. When it comes to complex financial operations across assets, the needed atomicity and composability can only be achieved within Ethereum's unified state machine.
The key is that innovation in the DeFi derivatives market relies on permissionless liquidity aggregation. For instance, Uniswap V4's Hook mechanism, Aave's cross-pool risk management, and GMX's synthetic asset model all require access to multi-source liquidity, which clearly cannot generate synergies on a closed stablecoin chain, and naturally cannot unleash the innovative charm of DeFi infrastructure.
Thus, Ethereum will ultimately play a dual role: as a neutral settlement layer between these exclusive chains (similar to SWIFT's clearing function), and as a foundational layer for DeFi innovation (providing composability for complex financial products).
