It seems that every day there is news sweeping the crypto market about 'new chains.' Payment giant Stripe has partnered with Paradigm to launch Tempo, followed closely by stablecoin issuer Circle announcing Arc; prior to that, Plasma and Stable announced financing to develop chains specifically for USDT; and participants in tokenization, from Securitize to Ondo Finance, are also revealing plans for building their own blockchains.
This wave is not merely about technical showboating, but a necessary strategic layout. Stablecoins and tokenized assets are gradually being recognized as the two most promising growth tracks in the crypto economy. They directly connect the flow of funds in the real world with traditional financial markets and are expected to evolve into asset classes worth trillions of dollars. Cross-border payments, round-the-clock settlement, and the tokenization of bonds and stocks—these scenarios are changing financial infrastructure, and controlling the 'chain' means controlling the new financial track.
Martin Burgherr, an executive at crypto bank Sygnum, succinctly stated, 'Establishing one's own L1 is about control and strategic positioning, not just technology.' In his view, the competition between stablecoins and tokenization is not merely a fight for market share but a comprehensive game concerning settlement speed, compliance, fee structures, and dominance.
In the eyes of the giants, true competition is no longer about 'whether it can run,' but 'who controls the track.'
The 'Essential Lesson' of Giants on Blockchain
Companies building their own blockchain are not trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch but are motivated by the core demand for blockchain as a 'settlement layer.' Their requirements for a chain often focus on several aspects.
First is performance and predictability. Building their own chain allows giants to isolate irrelevant transactions, ensuring performance always meets their business standards. Whether for stablecoin payments or tokenized bond trading, high-frequency, low-latency settlement demands are involved. This means accepting the reality of competing for bandwidth with thousands of other assets and applications—once the network is congested, the payment experience is immediately compromised.
Next is the rebalancing of costs and benefits. On Ethereum or Tron, every transfer means fees go to miners or validators. For payment giants like Stripe or Circle, this amounts to relinquishing potential profits. By controlling the underlying chain, they can not only internalize transaction fee income but also issue their own gas tokens, creating a new economic cycle. Alchemy's CTO Guillaume Poncin stated, 'The income opportunities from owning a settlement layer will far exceed the profit margins of traditional payment processing.'
Furthermore, there is compliance and embedded regulation. One of the biggest challenges traditional financial institutions face when entering the crypto space is how to meet regulatory requirements. KYC, AML, transaction monitoring—these are usually patched at the application layer, while a proprietary chain can embed them directly at the protocol level. In other words, regulation is no longer an external constraint but is internalized as the rules of the chain itself. This provides giants with a stronger voice when communicating with regulators.
Finally, there is strategy and security. Relying on Ethereum or Tron means bearing the risks of their governance decisions, technical upgrades, and even security vulnerabilities. For a network that may have an annual settlement volume reaching hundreds of billions of dollars, such external dependencies are unacceptable. A proprietary chain can provide higher controllability and resilience, ensuring stable capital flows even in extreme situations.
Morgan Krupetsky of Ava Labs pointed out that the value of a custom chain lies not only in technology but also in allowing companies to treat blockchain as a 'mid-to-back office,' truly integrating it into their operational systems. This positioning means that blockchain is transforming from a testing ground for crypto enthusiasts into infrastructure for multinational enterprises.
Why not use existing public chains directly?
Since Ethereum and Solana already have large user bases and mature ecosystems, why do the giants still want to start from scratch?
An obvious reason is control. Ethereum is a globally neutral public network, governed collectively by a foundation, developers, and the community. For payment companies or financial giants accustomed to complete control, tying their fate to the voting and upgrade pace of an external community is too risky. Solana, while known for its high throughput and low fees, also means sharing network resources with various applications like NFTs and DeFi, which is unacceptable for payment and settlement scenarios.
Another key factor is differentiation. Issuing stablecoins on a public chain can quickly gain liquidity, but it is difficult to build a moat. USDT and USDC are currently circulating on networks like Ethereum and Tron, but because of this, user loyalty to the underlying chain is very low; they only recognize the tokens themselves. To stand out in competition, building a proprietary chain offers possibilities: it not only serves as a settlement tool but also builds an independent ecosystem around the token. This enables the issuer to upgrade from being a mere 'asset provider' to an 'infrastructure provider.'
Of course, this does not mean that public chains will be marginalized. Analysts at Coinbase have pointed out that Circle's Arc and Stripe's Tempo may directly challenge Solana's positioning in terms of performance, but Ethereum, with its large institutional user base and proven security, is unlikely to be shaken in the short term.
Sygnum's Burgherr emphasized that the migration of liquidity and trust often takes years. In other words, even if the giants launch their own chains, attracting truly large-scale transaction volumes won't happen overnight.
This also explains why many new chains choose to maintain compatibility with EVM. Compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine means developers can seamlessly migrate existing applications, reducing cold start difficulties, and also enabling interoperability with mainstream public chains. This is a strategy of 'being independent yet connected': capable of controlling their own network while not being isolated from the crypto world.
Driven by Stripe, Circle, and a series of tokenization newcomers, blockchain is transitioning from an 'open experimentation field' to an 'enterprise-level mid-to-back office.' The motivation behind building proprietary chains ultimately stems from the pursuit of control, efficiency, and profit. Their demands for blockchain go far beyond the technology itself, focusing more on compliance, business models, and strategic security. In the eyes of the giants, true competition is no longer about 'whether it can run,' but 'who controls the track.'
This new blockchain 'involution' has only just begun.
