The Infrastructure Revolution of USDT: Can Emerging Public Chains Reshape the Global Payment Landscape?

Recently, the stablecoin market is undergoing a silent revolution. With the penetration of stablecoins into traditional finance and retail markets, some emerging specialized public chains are trying to reshape the infrastructure of stablecoins. These public chains aim to provide faster, lower-cost, and more scalable stablecoin transfer services to attract a large amount of funds from currently inefficient networks.

Among them, two notable projects are Plasma and Stable. Although there are technical differences in their implementations, both use USDT as the core hub and integrate USDT0, a cross-chain version of USDT.

Plasma, as a sidechain of Bitcoin, inherits Bitcoin's security while maintaining an independent consensus mechanism. Its design goal is to achieve thousands of transactions per second and about 1 second for final confirmation, making it particularly suitable for fast transfers of USDT. Most notably, transfers of the underlying USDT on Plasma are completely free. The platform profits by charging fees for other operations, which can be paid in USDT or Bitcoin.

In contrast, Stable is an independent Layer 1 network that uses a self-developed proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Similar to Plasma, Stable also offers free USDT transfers, but fees for other operations can only be paid in USDT. Stable appears to focus more on enterprise and institutional clients, providing some targeted features such as dedicated block space services for enterprises and a USDT transfer aggregator.

Both networks place great importance on privacy protection and have adopted their own technical solutions to ensure transaction privacy.

The core strategy of these emerging public chains is to target ecosystems with weak DeFi foundations, attracting liquidity through advantages such as free transfers. Their goal is not only to surpass the inefficient existing chains but also to foster new DeFi protocols by attracting users and capital, ultimately building a prosperous ecosystem.

This development may form a stablecoin-specific network similar to the new SWIFT system, where Tether is not only the issuer of stablecoins but also plays a key role in supporting currency value and underlying infrastructure. Tether can benefit from the scale advantages of USDT, while Plasma and Stable can benefit from the rapid flow of funds on its network.

However, this does not mean that other blockchain ecosystems will be eliminated. Blockchains that focus on specific functions or application scenarios, such as Solana and Ethereum along with their layer two solutions, are likely to continue to thrive.

Plasma has demonstrated its short-term appeal through a public token sale, with total deposits within the subscription limit reaching $1 billion. In addition, Plasma has advanced several collaborations involving USDT transfer services in Africa, cross-border payments, and commodity trading.

Nonetheless, whether these projects can truly achieve product-market fit remains to be seen. The concept of "stablecoin chain" may just be a well-designed marketing strategy aimed at generating attention for USDT and attracting users with zero Gas fees. This can essentially be viewed as a free value-added model in the trading space.

In the future, the success of these emerging public chains will depend on how they differentiate themselves in competition, choose the best market channels, and whether they can build a sustainable business ecosystem. Regardless of the outcome, this revolution in stablecoin infrastructure will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the global payment landscape.