Ethereum and Tron, or visa, should they be worried?

Although the Stablecoins were never supposed to exist when Bitcoin was created over 15 years ago, they turned out to be a boon for industry. It did not take long for many to realize that Bitcoin and other assets like Ethereum, Solana, XRP, etc., could not serve as a substitute for the US dollar because they were too volatile.

Stablecoins were the perfect solution. They ran on public blockchain rails but maintained prices parity with a given ankle – often the dollar. Their market capitalization has passed from sub $ 1 million in 2017 at 271 billion dollars today As they developed through the blockchains, mainly Ethereum and Tron, and have become the main liquidity engine for cash trading, Défi and Payments. By far, the two largest stables are the attachment (USDT) and the USD part (USDC), with respective stock markets of $ 164.85 billion and $ 65.22 billion.

But these transmitters no longer seem satisfied to simply get on the rails of other blockchains. They want to be the engine that makes the blockchain payments disappear. The team behind Tether has invested in several blockchains focused on stablescoin (plasma and stable) and giant payments Stripe seems to work On his own blockchain. Then, Tuesday, Circle Financial (CRCL), the main transmitter behind the USDC, announcement Arc plans – His own personalized L1 blockchain L1 for payments.

Brotté by the adoption of July 2025 of the Act on Engineering, the Stablecoins should explode. Currently, their offer of $ 271 billion represents only about 1.2% of the total money supply of M2 of M2 of $ 22.02. The Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that the stablecoins could reach $ 3.7 billions At the end of the decade, if the infrastructure is built.

(The block)

The CEO CEO, Jeremy Allaire, was quite frank by saying that the current mixture of blockchains is insufficient to meet the needs of a modern payment system.

Find out more: could stablecoins threaten emerging markets? An IMF manager says yes

“”We are at the point of support of a massive general adoption of stablecoins in the financial system, and companies run to rely on this infrastructure “,” said Allaire. “But so far, the Blockchain infrastructure had to respond to the most intense demands of large companies and financial companies has simply not existed.”

But for the arc or one of these other blockchains to succeed, they will have to take someone market share. Here is why there is an opportunity and which could be vulnerable.

Where today’s blockchains fail

Ethereum

Choose a major blockchain and you will find something that can be improved with regard to stablescoins and payments.

Ethereum, by far the largest blockchain outside Bitcoin with a market capitalization of $ 563.7 billionis too slow and expensive for generalized use of payments. Its current average transaction costs are $ 1.05, according to the TOKEN terminal (see below). Although it may seem competitive with card networks and their exchange costs, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, the Ethereum network can only Manage around 20 transactions per secondAnd these costs can go up or down wildly during peak periods. It is also important to note that these transaction costs must be paid in ETH, which means that users must keep a reserve at hand, the value of which can fluctuate according to market dynamics.

(Token terminal)

The costs reached an average of $ 20 tall per transaction for the first half of 2021 and culminated above $ 50 in May. No high volume payments and low value will accept this level of variance.

Read more: Ethereum is lagging behind. Here’s how it could finally shake Rival Solana

This gap does not mean that Ethereum has no important role to play in payments, but it will probably focus on the high value side and low volume of the spectrum. “Ethereum is the main channel in terms of total locked and economic security, which makes it the natural institutional financing platform”, ” said Zach Pandl, research manager at Graycale Investments in a February interview.

Base

These problems with Ethereum are not new, and that is why many industry analysts turn to L2 blockchains, like the base, in order to obtain the best of both worlds. In this case, this means the speed and low cost of a card network with Ethereum’s economic safety. Coinbase and Circle are in fact close partners and work to promote the adoption of the USDC on the basis.

Transactions on the basis generally cost a fraction of a hundred. But many of these networks, including the base, also remain experimental. Although this network has experienced spectacular growth in terms of developers and market attention, it remains very centralized because Coinbase is the only sequencer operator on the network. For L2 blockchains, sequencers fulfill a function similar to that of L1 validators or minors.

This vulnerability became apparent in early August when the base I went down for 33 minutes Due to a problem with its sequencer. If other sequencers had been available, the network may have been able to continue to operate in the same way as Bitcoin or Ethereum does not drop if a minor or a major staker is released.

(Dune Analytics)

Tron

And finally, it is worth discussing the Tron, the $ 36.2 billion Blockchain launched by the Chinese billionaire Justin Sun. Although Ethereum tends to have a higher spirit of mind, especially in the Western world, Tron is the dominant chain with regard to the USDT, welcoming $ 81.89 billion in the active.

And it has long been the reputation of being a low -cost blockchain, which counts particularly for users of emerging markets. “You are talking about some of the markets most sensitive to costs on earth,” said Chris Maurice, director general of the African crypto exchange Forbes when I profiled Justin Sun in March. “In some of these countries, people will spend eight hours of their day to save a few dollars, and $ 50 against a few hundred is a pretty huge difference.”

(The block)

But Tron is not as cheap as many people think. Its average transaction costs $ 1.70, which is greater than that of Ethereum.

(Token terminal)

In addition, Tron invoices in fact more on orders of magnitude for transactions involving USDT than for sending its native token. It costs only 39 cents to send TRX to the network, but a USDT transaction costs $ 4.83 on average.

Find out more: Tron is now more expensive than Ethereum. Will this harm Justin Sun’s new company?

It is perhaps for this reason that Maurice sees stablechains as a bow as a potential competitor of Tron in particular. “I think these players have a lot of capital available to push their channels and their infrastructure and they are looking to control the rails rather than the tokens,” said Maurice. “I think it’s a brilliant decision and they have the resources to succeed, which makes it a big threat to Tron.”

The representatives of Tron and Justin Sun did not respond to requests for comments before the publication of this story.

Visa, blue and white whale

Given the limits of existing blockchains with regard to payments, it goes without saying that these new stablechains will try to take a market share even if operators all play well in public. “(These new blockchains) are in competition with the existing L1s, for sure,” said an industry analyst who asked for anonymity.

But the main objective will be the real holder of the industry such as card networks. “Visa moves a little north of 10 billions of dollars per year thanks to its consumer towards business and business in Business Rails”, ” said Circle’s financial director Jeremy Fox-Geen, when calling on Tuesday’s results. The industry analyst cited above said that “if (circle) can take 10% of the volume of visa, it would be massive”. He also underlined how JPMorgan “moves somewhat north of 10 billions of dollars per day of movement of raw money and gross money regulations as well as other cases of use”.

And it seems that Circle uses a double strategy to cooperate or compete with the visa, depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, the company allows customers to set up transactions in the USDC. According to A business reportAs of April 30, 2025, the company had paid $ 225 million in USDC transactions.

But obviously, it is a drop in the bucket in terms of overall visa volume and will not do much to move the needle in terms of net income from Circle, which is far too concentrated in reserve income. According to His Q2 winningsHis reserve income, which consists of the money earned by investing the USDC guarantees in cash instruments, was $ 634 million. But it only did 24 million dollars in its subscription and services Business, which includes costs of processing USDC transactions and moving tokens on the networks.

In the future, the company wants these line articles to be balanced. This change could be more and more critical once President Trump replaces the president of the Fed, Jerome Powell, with a friendly successor who could try to reduce the rate of federal funds. Circle’s reserve rate of reserve return rate was 4.1%, and Trump reflects approximately a reduction of 300 bps in the future.

And it seems that Circle will bet its tokens on a bow, a blockchain designed to be the basis of the base of payments.

“Financial institutions and regulators expect a deterministic purpose, which the arcs will make with professional validators approved in a circle and its new consensus mechanism,” said Allaire. “ARC will also offer configurable confidentiality controls with confidential opt-in transfer features, which is essential for commercial and financial applications of the real world, and also supports regulatory compliance.”

And no one will have to pay transaction fees in a volatile L1 token.