This article was written in collaboration with @Castle_Labs.

Written by Gleb and Atomist.

Abstract

Stablecoins are dominating headlines throughout 2025. This leaves us wondering, which blockchain network will house and facilitate this asset class? As tokenised dollars continue to be increasingly accepted and regulated, five upcoming Layer 1 blockchains are seeking to join the race and compete against established stablecoin networks such as Ethereum, Tron, Solana and Base.

These are Plasma, Codex, 1Money, Arc, Stable and with the recent acquisition of Portal Labs, Monad, each with a different design and vision on its path to penetrate this booming industry. 

This comparative analysis cuts through the marketing noise and examines these networks in terms of: architectural innovations, consensus mechanisms, performance metrics, specialised features, and traction. We’ll leverage these findings to assess their positioning within the stablecoin economy. 

With a predicted 3.7T market size by the end of the decade according to CITIgroup and an ever-expanding current $277+ billion stablecoin market cap there for the taking, the 

stakes couldn't be higher. The winner won’t just become another alternative Layer 1 but, seeing the momentum behind stablecoin adoption, could become a foundational infrastructure to redefine how money moves in the digital age. 

Disclosures:

Information in this paper is sourced primarily from the documentation of the respective projects, in addition to official press releases. All discussed chains are not in mainnet, hence statements do not guarantee actual performance and future results.

The Infrastructure Wars Begin

Stablecoins emerged as an alternative onchain asset class due to the need for a fiat-pegged token that allows crypto traders to shield themselves from volatility. However, their unique properties of being a programmable and borderless fiat currency equivalents have allowed stablecoins to grow into a strong contender to traditional financial rails for applications such as cross-border remittances, payroll and treasury management. 

While stablecoins have found strong adoption, especially in countries plagued by inflation of their local currencies, at a technological level, they are still relying on general-purpose chains, which were not explicitly designed with these use cases in mind.

There are countless examples of general-purpose blockchains failing to meet the requirements for a globally scalable stablecoin network. They were not designed with fee predictability or execution guarantees in mind. 

Some examples of these shortcomings are:

• The “Otherside” NFT mint by Yuga Labs resulting in over $200 million in gas fees burned on Ethereum.
• The presence of MEV and arbitrage opportunities on low-fee networks such as Solana and Base, which incentivises high volumes of transaction spam.

This infrastructure gap has prompted a new category of blockchain: stablecoin-specific Layer 1s. Five projects have emerged as primary contenders in this niche: Plasma was the first to announce a chain focused specifically on stablecoin usage backed by the leading stablecoin issuer, USDT0, and its partner exchange, Bitfinex. Stable followed suit, also securing backing from USDT0 and Bitfinex for a USDT exclusive chain. Monad, on the other hand, has thrown its hat in the ring recently with the high-profile acquisition of Portal Labs, a stablecoin infrastructure provider. Codex, while issuer agnostic like Plasma, is funded primarily by Circle and Coinbase to become a tailored layer for USDC payments. However, Circle has also recently announced the creation of its own payments blockchain named Arc. 1Money founded by former Binance US CEO Brian Shroder also positions itself as a stablecoin specific payments network.

Stablecoin Chain Requirements: What Actually Matters for Global Adoption

Real-world needs drive the stablecoin movement forward. This is especially true for countries plagued by inflation. Stablecoin users include a freelancer in Turkey who wants to protect themselves from the 35% inflation of the Turkish Lira, a manufacturer in Nigeria who wants to pay his unbanked suppliers, and a family in the Philippines who deserve to receive remittances in seconds without incurring high Western Union fees. 

This is in addition to more corporate organisations that view stablecoins as a means to enhance back-office efficiency and circumvent the costly incumbent payment networks of Mastercard and Visa.

These users are less concerned with philosophy and decentralisation; they care about solving real problems. For this reason, the winning stablecoin infrastructure must excel across specific criteria that directly impact user experience and economic viability. 

Transaction Fees and Gas Tokens

To bring forward solid improvements compared to traditional payment gateways, stablecoins must address some of the frictions inherent in traditional payment methods. 

Among these, stablecoin payments aim to eliminate the friction tax associated with traditional remittances. On average, remittance users lose 6.35%, with banks charging an average of 12.66% on a $200 remittance according to the World Bank.

True zero-fee transactions make microtransactions possible, removing barriers to adoption for the world's poorest users, who also happen to be those in the most dire need of this technology.

This isn’t just about cost reduction, it's about competitive user experience:

• Users don’t have to deal with provider fees implicit in transactions
• When paying with stablecoins, they do not have to understand dual-token systems or gas economics.
• Transferring funds becomes as easy as sending a text message. 

Instant Transaction Finality

The 3-5 day settlement times of traditional banks have created a working capital trap, forcing the global economy to operate on implicit credit, which adds to the costs and inefficiencies associated with each transaction. As commerce is being conducted on a worldwide scale, payments should follow in tandem. When a manufacturer in Lagos pays a supplier in Vietnam, the payment should be final within seconds, not minutes or hours, eliminating trust guarantees implicit in any credit-based system and the need for working capital. Instant finality enables new business models, such as real-time payroll for global remote workers, just-in-time inventory financing and immediate settlement for e-commerce. 

Compliant Confidential Transactions

While this property might come as a surprise to crypto natives who value transparency at all costs, business payments require complete privacy: 

• A company that pays employees cannot have its salary information publicly available.
• Supply chain payments require confidentiality to prevent competitors from analysing proprietary information about business relationships.

Imagine a world where having a doxxed wallet would mean everyone can track you through your daily payments.

Chains facilitating the future of payments require inherent privacy guarantees for users. However, this must not be Monero-style complete anonymity, but selective privacy that allows for transparency in order to comply with global KYC and AML regulations. 

Cross-Chain Interoperability

To become widely adopted, stablecoins must be interoperable across different blockchain networks. As it stands, the launch of new networks will continue to impact this fragmentation. The winning stablecoin infrastructure must enable seamless integration with other chains, allowing users to transfer value and access the vibrant DeFi ecosystems of Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid, Base, and Arbitrum, among others. 

Native cross-chain functionality prevents ecosystem lock-in, a prevalent issue in traditional fintechs, and liquidity fragmentation, allowing users to access the best applications regardless of which blockchain they're built on.

Traditional Finance Integration

For stablecoins to become the primary means of value transfer and eclipse traditional finance, they must be seamlessly integrated with existing systems to facilitate this transition. This means direct bank account connections, credit/debit card integration, and support for traditional business banking features, such as ACH, wire transfers, and merchant services. Users will need to be able to move seamlessly between both realms during the transition period, and blockchain networks must facilitate this, providing a seamless experience for adoption. 

Developer Experience and Ecosystem

Network effects are one of the primary drivers of adoption. This requires attracting developers to your specific ecosystem, making developers' UX paramount to the chain's success. As part of it, the winning platform must provide:  

• Superior developer tooling.
• Comprehensive documentation.
• Strong ecosystem support.
• Sufficient liquidity for building stablecoin-focused applications

A strong developer ecosystem will not only attract the existing flagship DeFi and payments products to the chain but also has the potential to incentivise the creation of novel products that are chain-specific.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

As stablecoin usage continues to scale beyond just retail usage, there will be a need for specific tailored features for corporates ranging from guaranteed transaction throughput to specialised development SDKs. Institutions require reliable performance; this will not change as they venture into the onchain world. Consumer-focused chains that can't meet these requirements will lose large-scale adoption opportunities. We are already seeing the likes of Robinhood opt in to building their own chain where they can have a controlled environment. Successful stablecoin chains will have these features baked in from day one.

The Contenders

Plasma 

Plasma is building the foundational stack for scaling global stablecoin adoption. Their approach is to meet users where they are by focusing on USDT payments, the leading stablecoin with over 60% of market share. However, Plasma still onboarding a broad ecosystem of both stablecoin issuers and protocols, making diversity its strength. Furthermore, Plasma has taken the initiative to build a native Bitcoin bridge aiming to be the central venue for stablecoin enabled BTC finance. This strategy would allow Plasma to become the hub for the two most adopted onchain asset classes. 

Across its funding rounds, Plasma has raised a total of $74 million, including a $24 million Seed and Series A led by Framework Ventures and Bitfinex/USD₮0. Key investors include Bybit and the leading Japanese investment bank Nomura, in addition to the trading and venture capital firms: IMC, Cumberland, Flow Traders, Founders Fund, Katarage and 6th Man Ventures. Notable angel investors in Plasma include Peter Thiel, Paolo Arduino, Cobie and Zaheer Ebtikar. Most recently Plasma conducted a public sale for its native XPL token, the sale was 700%+ oversubscribed with a total of $323.5m in overcommitted funds. 

Chain Architecture

Plasma’s architecture combines its consensus mechanism, PlasmaBFT (derived from Fast HotStuff), to handle sequencing and finality with a Reth-based execution layer to ensure state transition, transaction execution, and EVM logic. These two components communicate through the Engine API, creating a system that's optimised for both performance and compatibility, allowing Plasma to inherit full EVM equivalence without modification.

Plasma BFT supports pipelining, allowing the proposal of a new block to begin while the previous block is still being committed. This allows for enhanced performance and throughput by overlapping block proposal and finality steps. 

Plasma Proof-of-Stake model innovates on traditional approaches by slashing rewards for misbehaving validators rather than collateral. In addition to this Validators are not penalized for liveness failures and the team is exploring optional no-lock staking to allow stake withdrawal without delay. 

Plasma’s consensus will follow a phased approach of decentralisation:

Phase 1 

• Trusted validator launch: a small group of known validators to secure the network at mainnet launch, allowing for stability and protocol iteration without operational risk.

Phase 2 

• Validator Expansion: scaling the validator set to test horizontal performance under larger committee sizes and validate throughput under load with additional trusted entities.

Phase 3 

• Permissionless participation: opening validator access to the public, enabling full decentralisation while preserving protocol-level safety guarantees through built-in safeguards.

Another core portion of the Plasma chain architecture is the native Bitcoin bridge, which allows BTC to be used in smart contracts without relying on custodians, synthetic assets, or isolated wrapped tokens. This is achieved through a synthetic version of the underlying asset named pBTC, which inherits cross-chain interoperability from the LayerZero OFT standard. According to Plasma, the bridge is secured by a verifier network that will be decentralised over time and composed of independent institutions, each operating their own infrastructure. The signing process involves Multi-Party Computation (MPC) or threshold Schnorr signatures, ensuring that no single verifier ever holds the full private key. 

Plasma is currently in testnet with a total of 338.47k confirmed transactions from 137,927 addresses. 

Transaction Fees and Gas Tokens

Plasma provides complete gas abstraction for USDT through its protocol-level paymaster system. This mechanism sponsors gas for eligible USDT transfers using lightweight identity verification and rate limits, which are funded by protocol-managed XPL allowances. This is in addition to being able to also pay for gas using whitelisted assets such as USDT and BTC,  facilitated through automated swaps and completely eliminating the need to hold the native XPL token when conducting payments.

Instant Transaction Finality

Plasma is secured by PlasmaBFT, a high-performance implementation of Fast HotStuff written in Rust. It combines the safety of Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus with low-latency finality, enabling "near-instant settlement" with sub second block times. This ensures high throughput and deterministic guarantees required for stablecoin-scale applications.

Compliant Confidential Transactions

Plasma is exploring a confidential payments framework, which would include stealth address transfers derived from the recipient’s public key, shielding the destination from public view and only allowing the recipient to view and claim the funds. Users would be able to move payments in and out of confidential flows using a native mechanism bypassing the need for new tokens, wrappers or bridges. Encrypted Memos would allow optional encrypted metadata to be attached to each transfer. Users are empowered through selective disclosures, utilising verifiable proofs, which enables complete privacy while maintaining auditability and regulatory compliance.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Plasma is a USDT-focused chain that intends to adopt USDT0 rather than native USDT issuance, In addition to the LayerZero integration, Plasma is launching with Hyperlane (cross-chain messaging and asset transfers), Relay (a cross-chain payments system), and Stargate (cross-chain asset transfers). Plasma is also building a native Bitcoin bridge to enable BTC to be used in smart contracts without relying on custodians, synthetic assets, or isolated wrapped tokens. 

Traditional Finance Integration

Plasma will support a wide array of payment partners, including card issuance, global on- and off-ramps, stablecoin orchestration, liquidity partners and risk and compliance tooling. Their announced partners are detailed below:

Acctual	API-driven invoicing and bill-pay platform that enables both crypto and fiat payments.	Noah	API-first global payments with enterprise-grade compliance and real-time settlements.
ARST	Argentine peso stablecoin, backed 1:1, offering fast, low-cost digital peso transactions.	OpenFX	Modern FX infrastructure for real-time cross-border payments.
BiLira	Issuer of TRYB, a Turkish lira stablecoin and a leading exchange in Turkey.	P2P.me	Decentralised protocol for stablecoin-to-fiat swaps using zero-knowledge proofs.
Blindpay	Non-custodial stablecoin API for global payouts and remittances.	Shiga	Regulated stablecoin wallet with fiat ramps and multichain swaps for African businesses.
CopperX	Developer-first crypto and fiat payment gateway and payout API.	Sphere	API for stablecoin payments, fiat ramps, and cross-border transfers.
El Dorado	P2P stablecoin super-app for Latin America offering peer-to-peer on/off-ramping.	Stables	Wallet and card platform for spending, sending, and ramping stablecoins globally.
HIFI	Global on/off-ramp API for stablecoin conversion, wallet provisioning, and compliant transfers.	Utila	MPC wallet platform with APIs for payments, treasury, and compliance.
Holyheld	A card for crypto natives, enabling payments from a phone using crypto wallets	WalaPay	Payout and virtual account API for global fiat and stablecoin disbursements with built-in compliance.
Indodax	Indonesia’s largest regulated crypto exchange.	XFX	Stablecoin and fiat settlement API for cross-border payments and FX execution.
Infini	Crypto neo-bank that issues global crypto cards with yields.	Yasmin	Native on-chain bank and financial venue for the Greater Syria Arabic Region.
Levl	Provides APIs for seamless cross-border payments.	Yellow Card	African platform enabling users to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies.
Mansa	Enables instant cross-border payments using stablecoin-backed liquidity.	ZKP2P	Trustless dApp for peer-to-peer on-ramping and off-ramping.

Developer Experience and Traction

Plasma had already gained significant traction before the launch of its testnet, having integrated several key partners and tooling. It has listed 24 payment provider partners, in addition to 5 account abstraction infrastructure/wallet providers (Gelato Relay, Protofire Safe, Thirdweb, Privy, and Turnkey), Dune for data analytics, four blockchain indexers (Arkham, Goldsky, Quicknode, and Zerion), and Chainlink, as well as Blocksense, as oracles. This will mean that from Genesis Day, Plasma will have an expansive ecosystem of apps and, most importantly, infrastructure providers that will incentivise adoption. Furthermore, Plasma has conducted a public sale of its native token XPL. To qualify for the sale, potential buyers had to lock up stablecoins, resulting in a total of $1 billion in stablecoin liquidity being locked up in the public sale. These stablecoins will be converted to USDT0 and will be issued on Plasma upon mainnet launch. This strategy has unlocked significant liquidity for Plasma before its launch, allowing it to ease past the cold start problem faced by newcomer chains. Plasma has also recently announced multiple crypto heavyweights launching on their chain, this includes Aave, Fluid, Pendle in addition to Binance Earn which has already secured over 1b in USDT deposits. 

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Plasma delivers comprehensive payment infrastructure designed for seamless business integration, offering developers and merchants complete toolsets including APIs, SDKs, point-of-sale modules, and webhook systems. This robust architecture enables businesses to effortlessly build payment workflows, implement USDT checkout processes, automate payout systems, and embed stablecoin capabilities. This empowers merchants across both digital and physical commerce to accept stablecoin payments natively, providing instant settlement, significantly reducing fees compared to traditional processors in addition to unrestricted global access. 

Codex

Codex is a Layer 2 blockchain explicitly designed for stablecoin-based institutional payments and programmable financial automation. Founded by a team with backgrounds at Meta, Coinbase, and Jane Street, and backed by Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and other institutional leaders, they raised $15.8 million to provide a secure and compliant environment for high-frequency, business-critical digital money flows.

Whereas most Layer 2s focus on improving cost and speed for decentralised applications, Codex is tailored for use in regulated financial environments, with support for FX settlement, enterprise APIs, and stablecoin-native fee mechanisms.

Chain Architecture

Codex is built on the OP Stack, a rollup framework that maintains full EVM equivalence. This allows it to offer native compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts, wallets, and development tools. Transactions are confirmed instantly on the Codex Layer 2 network and later posted to Ethereum Layer 1 for fraud-proof verification and final settlement, typically within five to ten minutes.

Unlike standalone Layer 1 chains, Codex’s security and data integrity are anchored to Ethereum’s decentralised validator network. The OP Stack relies on a centralised sequencer to rapidly order and process transactions on Codex, achieving high throughput and low latency for end users. Once packaged, batches of transactions are submitted to Ethereum, where they’re subject to fraud proofs, allowing challenges and preventing any invalid state transitions.

This architecture enables Codex to balance the needs of institutional clients for fast, cost-effective settlement with the battle-tested security of Ethereum. The modular nature of the OP Stack further allows Codex to adapt its execution, governance, or data availability layers as market and compliance needs evolve, positioning it for long-term flexibility and cross-chain interoperability within the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

Transaction Fees and Gas Token

Codex enables transaction fees to be paid in USDC, offering deterministic pricing and removing the need for volatile gas tokens. This approach simplifies accounting and enhances institutional usability. Stablecoin-denominated gas also supports institution-level reporting and legal audit, unlike many other chains where gas token price volatility introduces uncertainty that compliance teams must arbitrage away.

Instant Transaction Finality

Codex, as an L2 blockchain, gives users rapid settlement, where most transactions appear final within seconds on Codex itself. However, irreversible finality is only achieved when these transactions are posted and confirmed on Ethereum L1, typically within 5–10 minutes. Because of this structure, institutions are able to choose their own risk management policies: they can act on L2 settlement for speed, or wait for L1 finality if absolute certainty is required. This L2/L1 model is core to Codex’s ability to offer fast payment settlement and high transaction throughput for users while still inheriting the robust security guarantees of Ethereum.

Compliant Confidential Transactions

Currently public by default, Codex plans to introduce ZK-based compliance privacy layers. Access is governed through KYC onboarding and infrastructure-level controls. If Codex delivers on its ZK compliance roadmap, it may still pioneer regulatory-grade privacy solutions that do not compromise enterprise audit or operational oversight. This is a key challenge - where most still struggle to balance confidentiality and regulation.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Codex is EVM-compatible and supports native USDC issuance, removing the need for bridging. Its architecture reduces systemic risk in stablecoin transfers, though bridging risk may persist for non-USDC assets.

Traditional Finance Integration

Codex is deeply embedded within the institutional stablecoin ecosystem. It supports fiat on/off ramps, FX conversion, and T+0 settlement, and is backed by partners like Circle and Coinbase. These integrations enable Codex to support high-throughput cross-border flows, B2B financial operations, and direct fiat connectivity, making it attractive to banks, payment networks, and fintech platforms. This stacking of on/off-ramps, FX rails, and KYC’d access collapses the gap between onchain programmable finance and the realities of global B2B flows, making Codex a plausible settlement network for institutions seeking more than just public DeFi exposure.

Developer Experience and Ecosystem

Codex sets itself apart not just through EVM compatibility, but by offering specialised enterprise SDKs, wallet-as-a-service integration, and compliance APIs for automated and large-scale stablecoin flows. The technical and compliance composability of Codex gives enterprise developers a one-stop route to integrate programmable money with legacy infrastructure, without forgoing the audit trails critical for real-world finance.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Codex does not currently provide enterprise-specific service level agreements or dedicated blockspace allocation, but it delivers a secure, audited rollup infrastructure with compliance solutions for institutional use cases.

1Money

1Money is a next-generation Layer 1 payments network, purpose-built exclusively for stablecoin transactions. Founded by Brian Shroder (former CEO of Binance.US) and backed by leading fintech and crypto investors, including F-Prime Capital, Galaxy Ventures, and Hack VC, 1Money raised $20 million in its seed round to launch the first stablecoin-native payments chain. 1Money’s mission is to deliver the fastest, most secure, and most compliant platform for global digital payments. By focusing solely on stablecoin payments rather than general-purpose blockchain use, 1Money aims to eliminate the technical and regulatory barriers that have hindered stablecoin adoption for cross-border commerce, remittances, and financial inclusion.

To support this mission, 1Money’s architecture diverges significantly from the conventions of Layer 1 design.

Chain Architecture

At the heart of 1Money lies its patent-pending Byzantine Consistent Broadcast (BCB) protocol, which replaces traditional block-based processing. The BCB protocol achieves consensus through transaction-level broadcasting and validation, eliminating the batching delays of traditional blockchains. This enables parallel transaction processing, providing ultra-fast and irreversible settlement while completely removing the risk of chain reorganisations. This parallelised, blockless structure enables over 250,000 transactions per second, ensures sub-second settlement, and is designed for horizontal scalability, where capacity increases linearly with the number of nodes.

Security is maintained through a permissioned validator set, each participant undergoing strict KYC and AML procedures. This model dramatically reduces the risks associated with double-spending, MEV, and smart contract exploits. The network does not support smart contracts at all, eliminating a common source of vulnerabilities, and instead processes each transaction individually, without delay or dependency on block production.

Fees are charged directly in supported stablecoins, based on a fixed pricing model that is designed for operational predictability. Protocol-level compliance features include automated sanctions enforcement and reporting, while support for multiple stablecoin assets positions 1Money as a serious contender for becoming core infrastructure in global payment systems.

Transaction Fees and Gas Token

1Money charges flat, low fees in stablecoins, with no native token. It avoids volatility-based pricing and aims to subsidise fees through third-party partnerships. This non-speculative model aligns with enterprise accounting expectations, rejecting blockspace financialisation and appealing to operators seeking clarity over complexity, a stance rarely seen in other L1s where native tokens often serve dual roles as incentive and speculative assets. By removing token-induced friction entirely, 1Money directly appeals to CFOs and treasury managers seeking operational clarity over crypto-native complexity.

Instant Transaction Finality

Sub-second transaction-level finality is achieved via the BCB protocol. Each transaction is validated and broadcast independently, avoiding batching delays. The blockless model enables deterministic, irreversible settlement and scales horizontally with validator participation. This makes 1Money one of the only chains to offer deterministic, sub-second settlement without relying on probabilistic finality, a technical leap with strong parallels in high-frequency payment rails, and underscored by the ongoing patent process for BCB, which signals credible innovation beyond marketing.

Compliant Confidential Transactions

1Money prioritises compliance over anonymity. All accounts must undergo complete KYC/AML onboarding, and every transaction is visible to the network’s permissioned validator set. Rather than pursuing cryptographic privacy tools, 1Money offers pseudonymity under regulatory scrutiny, making it a strong fit for regulated institutions but an unlikely home for privacy-seeking users. This deliberate prioritisation transforms privacy from a technical feature into a regulated service: transaction metadata is protected from the public but fully auditable by designated authorities, setting a new compliance benchmark for enterprise chains and presenting a potential blueprint for global payment regulators.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Designed for financial interoperability, 1Money facilitates seamless integration with both traditional financial institutions and other L1 chains. Through atomic messaging and API-based architecture, it enables stablecoin transfers across networks without relying on smart contracts or liquidity bridges. Its infrastructure is built to serve as a payments backbone, not a composability layer. In sidestepping generic composability, 1Money reduces both security and liquidity fragmentation risks, problems that have repeatedly plagued bridge-centric DeFi protocols, thereby focusing on reliability over reach.

Traditional Finance Integration

1Money offers APIs for digital accounts, on/off ramps, debit programmes, and merchant payments. Its focus includes remittances, financial inclusion, and B2B settlement, designed to align with compliance and operational standards of enterprise partners. By abstracting away crypto complexity, 1Money allows businesses in emerging markets to onboard with familiar processes, making the network approachable for compliance teams and non-technical operators, something unachievable in L1s optimised primarily for DeFi architecture.

Developer Experience and Ecosystem

Unlike programmable chains, 1Money does not support smart contracts. Instead, it exposes a robust suite of APIs targeted at financial service providers, banks, and fintech developers. The network trades composability for predictability, appealing to developers building regulated financial infrastructure rather than consumer-facing dApps. 1Money’s ecosystem strategy mirrors traditional enterprise software platforms, prioritising onboarding flows, auditability, and API reliability.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Its infrastructure is optimised for compliance, with validator participation restricted to entities that pass formal onboarding and governance checks. This ensures that transaction reliability and auditability are maintained at the protocol level, prioritising operational trust over base-layer decentralisation. This stance is a conscious trade-off: by reinforcing validator gatekeeping and service guarantees, 1Money implicitly bets that the next era of stablecoin settlement will be won on trust, compliance, and uptime, rather than maximising permissionlessness.

Arc

Arc is Circle's purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for stablecoin finance and programmable money. Unlike other contenders that are building from the ground up, Arc leverages Circle's established position as the issuer of USDC, which maintains over $68 billion in circulation. This provides Arc with immediate access to stablecoin liquidity and institutional relationships that other chains must work to establish. Circle's regulatory standing and compliance infrastructure position Arc as the most institutionally-integrated solution in the stablecoin infrastructure space.

Circle has raised over $1 billion across multiple funding rounds from institutional investors including Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Fidelity, and Digital Currency Group. Circle has recently conducted an IPO under the ticker symbol CRCL on the New York Stock Exchange and hence now additionally has access to funding from public markets.

Chain Architecture

Arc is built on the Malachite consensus engine, a high-performance implementation of the Tendermint BFT protocol. The network utilises a permissioned Proof-of-Authority (PoA) validator set composed of established, geographically distributed institutions that meet strict operational and regulatory standards. This design prioritises institutional requirements and regulatory compliance over maximum decentralisation.

The architecture delivers deterministic finality with full EVM compatibility, enabling developers to use familiar Ethereum tooling while accessing sub-second settlement guarantees. Arc achieves approximately 3,000 TPS with 20 geographically distributed validators and finality in less than 350 milliseconds. In optimised configurations with four validators, the network can exceed 10,000 TPS with sub-100ms finality.

The roadmap includes multi-proposer support to increase throughput by approximately 10x and optional lower fault-tolerance configurations that can reduce latency by around 30%. The modular architecture enables future integration of advanced privacy technologies without requiring fundamental protocol changes.

Transaction Fees and Gas Tokens

Arc uses USDC as the native gas token, eliminating fee volatility and simplifying accounting for enterprises. The network implements an enhanced EIP-1559 mechanism with exponentially-weighted moving averages to smooth fee fluctuations and provide predictable transaction costs. Through dedicated paymaster integration, users can pay fees in other local stablecoins and tokenized money, removing the need to hold volatile native tokens.

Transaction fees are directed to an onchain Arc Treasury at launch, supporting long-term network development. This approach provides enterprises with dollar-denominated transaction costs that enable predictable financial planning and operational budgeting.

Instant Transaction Finality

Arc delivers deterministic finality in less than 350 milliseconds through its Malachite consensus engine. Transactions on Arc are either unconfirmed or 100% final and irreversible—there is no probabilistic settlement phase. Once a block receives commitment from over two-thirds of the validator set through multi-round voting, it becomes instantly final, providing the settlement certainty required for institutional financial workflows.

Compliant Confidential Transactions

Arc's privacy roadmap begins with confidential transfers that shield transaction amounts while maintaining address visibility for regulatory compliance. The implementation uses EVM precompiles connected to cryptographic backends leveraging Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) for performant, auditable privacy.

The privacy model supports institutional compliance through "view keys" that provide authorized parties with read-only access to specific transaction data. This enables selective disclosure to auditors and regulators while maintaining commercial confidentiality. The modular architecture allows for future integration of advanced privacy technologies including MPC, FHE, and zero-knowledge proofs as they mature.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Arc provides comprehensive traditional finance integration through Circle's established platform products. Native integration includes Circle's Mint service for direct USDC issuance from fiat bank deposits, creating seamless onramps from traditional finance without credit requirements. The network supports direct bank account connections, enterprise-grade compliance tools, and traditional business banking features.

Circle's regulatory relationships and compliance infrastructure provide Arc with institutional-grade connectivity to traditional financial systems. This includes support for regulated financial services, institutional custody solutions, and direct integration with existing enterprise financial workflows through Circle's established partner ecosystem.

Traditional Finance Integration

Arc offers enterprise-grade developer tools including specialised SDKs, comprehensive APIs, and native payment modules for invoice-linked payments, refund protocols, and smart treasury agents. The platform maintains EVM compatibility while providing financial-specific primitives that reduce barriers to building compliant financial applications.

Circle's established ecosystem provides Arc with immediate access to institutional relationships, regulatory frameworks, and proven infrastructure. The network launches with native support for Circle's product suite including USDC, EURC, USYC (tokenized money market fund), and comprehensive payment infrastructure, giving developers access to battle-tested financial primitives from launch.

Developer Experience and Traction

Arc will launch battle-tested financial primitives. Native support for USDC, EURC, and USYC (Circle's tokenized money market fund) provides developers with proven, regulated building blocks for financial applications. Specialized SDKs enable complex workflows including invoice-linked payments, automated refund protocols, and programmable treasury management.

The EVM compatibility ensures developers can leverage existing Ethereum tooling while accessing Arc's financial-specific features. This combination of familiar development environments with specialized financial primitives significantly reduces the technical barriers to building enterprise-grade financial applications.

Circle's ecosystem provides immediate access to institutional customers, regulatory frameworks, and proven use cases. Rather than building developer communities from zero, Arc inherits Circle's established relationships and proven market demand.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Arc is designed as institutional-grade infrastructure with permissioned validators, guaranteed performance metrics, and comprehensive compliance features. The validator model ensures operational resilience and regulatory compliance, while the modular architecture supports customisation for specific enterprise requirements.

The network provides native support for complex financial workflows including programmable FX engines, tokenized asset issuance, and automated treasury management. Arc's roadmap includes a transition to permissioned Proof-of-Stake for broader validator decentralisation while maintaining institutional-grade security and compliance standards.

Monad 

Monad represents a distinct category compared to the other chains discussed as a general-purpose blockchain that strategically pivoted to capitalise on the growing opportunity of stablecoin adoption. To that extent, rather than building stablecoin infrastructure from the ground up, Monad acquired Portal Labs to integrate a comprehensive payment base while maintaining its performance edge. Portal Labs is a stablecoin finance developer platform, allowing companies to create wallets, move stablecoins and scale on-chain operations through SDKs and dedicated APIs. This M&A move was a first for blockchain foundations, and it will likely result in an exciting new competitor for the stablecoin landscape. 

Monad has raised a total of $248 million across three funding rounds, with a valuation of $3 billion as of its latest Series A round, which closed in May 2024. Key investors include crypto VC heavyweights Paradigm, which led the Series A, and Dragonfly, which led the seed round. This is in addition to Coinbase Ventures, GSR Ventures, Wintermute Ventures and OKX Ventures, among others. Notable angels include Naval Ravikant, Cobie, and Hasu.

Chain Architecture

The Monad team has rebuilt practically every component of their client from scratch in order to push the boundaries of the intersection between scalability and decentralisation. Monad claims that these innovations will enable them to achieve performance metrics of 10,000 TPS with a 500-ms block frequency and 1-second finality. This would position them as one of the most performant EVM-based Layer 1s available. Monad was able to achieve this feat on its testnet with April 17th having a peak TPS of 10,832.

Monad solves speed problems by running multiple processes at once instead of doing everything sequentially. It uses MonadBFT consensus (based on the proven HotStuff algorithm) which can handle malicious actors and processes transactions in pipeline batches. This allows Monad to simultaneously process different transactions in parallel pipelines, dramatically increasing throughput.

Path from proposal to finality for block N in MonadBFT in the happy path. Communication is linear, generally following the "fan out, fan in" pattern. Leaders directly message to validators; validators directly message to the next leader.

Monad uses two additional technologies to maximize speed: MonadDB is a custom database that's optimized for blockchain data storage and RaptorCast which is a way to spread new blocks across the network that uses erasure coding and a two-tier broadcasting system. This efficiently uses every validator's internet upload capacity to minimize the time it takes for everyone to receive new blocks.

RaptorCast used to send erasure-encoded chunks from a leader to each validator.

Transaction Fees and Gas Tokens

Monad targets "near-zero gas fees" with EIP-1559 compatibility. While this represents an improvement on traditional chains, Monad maintains traditional gas economics, requiring users to hold and manage native tokens to pay for gas fees. While competitive in cost, this approach preserves the user friction of holding volatile native tokens. 

Instant Transaction Finality

Monad aims to deliver exceptional finality performance, achieving 1-second single-slot finality alongside 1-second block times. This means transactions become irreversible within a single second, which is optimal for real-time payment applications. 

Compliant Confidential Transactions

As a general-purpose chain, Monad does not include native privacy features. It instead relies on its general-purpose EVM capabilities to provide the basis for potential application-layer solutions. 

Cross-Chain Interoperability

The acquisition of Portal has provided stablecoin users of Monad with significant built-in functionality, including cross-chain interoperability. Portal provides customers with the ability to conduct effortless cross-chain swaps across over 100 supported chains. In addition to this, it supports multiple interoperability partners, including Chainlink CCIP (standard that enables developers to build secure cross-chain apps that can transfer tokens, send messages, and initiate actions across blockchains), Garden (cross-chain Bitcoin swaps), Hyperlane (cross-chain messaging and asset transfers), LayerZero (cross-chain messaging), Polymer (cross-chain action proving through cross-chain merkle proofs) and Wormhole (cross-chain messaging protocol).

Traditional Finance Integration

Monad’s payments ecosystem has three projects that integrate the chain with TradFi:

1. Agora, the stablecoin issuer facilitating on and off ramps.
2. DAU Cards, which issues crypto-backed debit cards. 
3. Fizen, which provides an on / off ramp in addition to crypto payment gateways for businesses to be able to accept crypto payments.

Otherwise the acquisition of Portal Labs has provided Monad with a dedicated provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, including embedded wallets with TSS MPC security, APIs/SDKs for easy integration. Other key features of the Portal product offering include gas sponsorship, batch transactions, and enterprise-grade security.

Developer Experience and Traction

Monad demonstrates strong commitment to developer ecosystem building through the Founder Residency, Madness competitions, hackathons, and Mach Accelerator programs. These provide not just funding but mentorship and ecosystem connections. This in addition to an action business development effort by the foundation has resulted in over 273 projects committing to launch on Monad mainnet. These span the following categories: AI, Betting, DeFi, DePIN, Gaming, Governance, NFT, Payments, Prediction Markets, RWA and Social. For a complete list visit the Monad ecosystem directory: https://www.monad.xyz/ecosystem

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Monad's reportedly high performance (10,000 TPS, 1-second finality) provides the predictable service levels enterprises would require. However, specialised stablecoin enterprise features aren't extensively detailed beyond the Portal acquisition.

Stable

Stable addresses the core stablecoin infrastructure problem: USDT, with $160B circulation and 500+ million users generating billions in daily transfers, operates without dedicated blockchain optimised for it. Unlike general-purpose blockchains that treat stablecoins as any other asset, every component of Stable's protocol is engineered to minimise friction in USDT transfers and provide a streamlined, high-performance, tailored environment. 

Stable has recently announced a $28M seed round led by Bitfinex, USDT0 and Hack VC. This comes with participation from Franklin Templeton, Castle Island Ventures, E-girl Capital, ByBit Mirana, Susquehanna International Group, Nascent, Blue Pool Capital, BTSE and KuCoin Ventures. Notable advisors include Paolo Arduino, Nathan McCauley, Brian Johnson and Gabriel Abed.

Chain Architecture

The network is a Layer 1 that utilises StableBFT, a customised Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol built on CometBFT (a proven fork of Tendermint), delivering deterministic finality and fault tolerance up to one-third of the validators. The platform achieves sub-second block times and finality, ensuring transactions are finalised rapidly to support real-time settlement. Through the Stable SDK, the StableBFT would be able to communicate with Stable EVM, an Ethereum-compatible execution layer, through a set of precompiled contracts. These precompiles expose native StableSDK module functionality to EVM smart contracts, enabling them to securely and atomically interact with the core chain logic. 

The technical roadmap reveals ambitious performance targets through a 3-phase optimisation strategy, with phase 1 being the current Stable implementation:

Phase 2   

• Introduction of optimistic parallel execution (enabling 2x throughput improvements) 
• State database optimisations through MemDB and VersionDB with memory-mapped storage
• USDT transfer aggregators for mass transaction processing.

Phase 3  

• Advanced consensus through StableBFT built atop Autobahn (demonstrating 200,000+ TPS in controlled environments)
• StableVM++ replacing the Go-based EVM with a C++ implementation (projected 6x execution performance improvement), 
• High-performance RPC architecture supporting over 10,000 TPS with sub-100ms latency.

Transaction Fees and Gas Tokens

Stable uses USDT0 as the primary token, with gas-free USDT0 transfers enabled through EIP-7702 and Account Abstraction. For non-USDT0 transactions, users pay gas fees in USDT0 tokens, which are automatically converted to gasUSDT by the bundler and paymaster system. Users only need to hold USDT0 tokens, with the protocol handling all gas conversions automatically, eliminating the complexity of traditional dual-token systems.

However, peer-to-peer USDT transactions on Stable are completely free, as they leverage the EIP-7702 permit mechanism and Account Abstraction

Instant Transaction Finality

Stable's will provide sub-second block times and single-slot finality on the EVM, uniquely optimised for the scalable issuance, settlement, and management of USDT. 

Compliant Confidential Transactions

Stable's roadmap includes confidential transfer capabilities utilising ZK cryptography to conceal transaction amounts while maintaining visibility of sender/recipient addresses to ensure regulatory compliance. This would provide enterprise-grade privacy designed for business payments while still maintaining auditability for the purpose of KYC and AML.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

USDT0 tokens, which will be used on Stable, adhere to LayerZero's OFT standard, enabling seamless cross-chain USDT movement without relying on traditional bridging complexity. This enables direct interoperability with other LayerZero-connected chains, consolidating USDT liquidity across networks. This positions Stable as a central hub for cross-chain USDT activity rather than a siloed network.

Traditional Finance Integration

Stable has taken a native approach to TradFi integration. This is achieved through the Stable App, which features social login capabilities, providing a familiar user experience for non-crypto-native users. The wallet will feature direct integration of debit and credit cards, linked to USDT, to simplify the use of stablecoins for everyday payments. In addition to this, Stable is developing merchant payment tools that enable businesses to accept USDT directly, thereby bypassing the expense of third-party processors.

Developer Experience and Traction

Stable focuses on simplifying development for USDT-based applications by offering a specialised SDK tailored specifically for stablecoin-based dApp development. Stable will also provide robust APIs and integration services to enable seamless incorporation of Stable’s infrastructure into existing enterprise systems. Precompiled contract interfaces will facilitate seamless interaction between EVM contracts and Stable SDK modules, simplifying complex cross-module transactions. The tight integration with Tether's ecosystem creates unique opportunities for USDT-focused developers.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure

Stable's guaranteed blockspace model provides enterprises with dedicated transaction capacity through validator-level customisation. Validators would prioritise guaranteed transactions by pulling them from a dedicated mempool, separate from public traffic. Dedicated RPC nodes route transactions through isolated RPC endpoints, reducing contention and enabling consistent throughput, this is done through a set of Guaranteed Blockspace APIs. Through this framework Stable aims to ensure guaranteed performance even during network congestion for business-critical operations. This brings comprehensive institutional infrastructure designed specifically with enterprise risk management in mind.

Comparison Tables