Stripe built one. Circle built one. A Bitfinex-backed startup built another. Over the past year, payments and stablecoin companies have each launched a blockchain designed around one job: moving dollars. The pitch is simple, and the early numbers are less impressive than the announcements.
Why build a chain for stablecoins?
Backers of these networks point to a few frustrations with general-purpose blockchains: unpredictable fees, competition for space with other activity, and the need to buy a volatile token just to pay for a transfer. A payments-first chain can instead let users pay fees in a stablecoin, reserve space for payments, and build compliance features into the base layer. Stripe’s chief executive is quoted on Tempo’s site saying it is Stripe’s default chain for new features. We explained one version of the idea in our piece on Circle’s Arc, and how outside developers respond in our coverage of DeFi protocols deploying there.
The contenders
| Chain | Live since | Backers | Fee token | Usage data we found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tempo | Mar. 18, 2026 | Stripe and Paradigm | Any USD-denominated stablecoin | About 5,600 daily users and 2.5 transactions per second (Artemis, reported about Apr. 21); about 3.9 million cumulative transactions (The Defiant, May 28). Homepage claim of $36 billion annualized volume is undated and unaudited. |
| Circle Arc | Sept. 16, 2026 | Circle, with BlackRock and Visa among validators | USDC | Circle says 100+ apps were live at launch; we found no independent usage figure. |
| Stable | Dec. 8, 2025 | Bitfinex and Hack VC (seed round) | USDT | $19.32 million in stablecoins on the chain as of Oct. 27, 2026 (DefiLlama), against a $2 billion pre-launch deposit claim. |
| Plasma | Sept. 25, 2025 | Stablecoin-focused startup | Zero-fee USDT transfers, limited at first | About $710 million in stablecoins in mid-August 2026, down from a peak above $6 billion (Datawallet, citing DeFiLlama). |
Sources: CoinDesk, Protos, The Defiant, The Block, DefiLlama and Datawallet, linked below. Usage figures come from different dates and sources and are not directly comparable. Company-reported claims are labeled as such.
Tempo. Incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, Tempo moved from a public testnet in December 2025 to mainnet on March 18, 2026, according to CoinDesk. It has no volatile gas token; fees are paid in any dollar-denominated stablecoin and converted by a built-in market. Finality is under a second, and a shared policy registry applies allow or block rules across tokens. Its validators include Stripe, Visa, MoneyGram and Zodia Custody, and Protos, citing Fortune, reported a $500 million raise at a $5 billion valuation in October 2025. An agent-payments protocol launched alongside mainnet, which connects to the theme of our report on AI agents paying in stablecoins.
Arc. Circle opened Arc’s mainnet on September 16, 2026 with USDC as the gas token and, per The Block, BlackRock and Visa among validators. Privacy features were not yet live network-wide at launch.
Stable. Backed by Bitfinex and Hack VC and advised by Tether’s chief executive, Stable launched on December 8, 2025 with USDT as the gas token, according to The Block, and later upgraded to native USDT0. It describes confidential transfers using zero-knowledge proofs.
Plasma. Launched September 25, 2025 with a headline of zero-fee USDT transfers, initially limited to Plasma’s own products. Within weeks CoinDesk reported its block explorer showed about 14.9 transactions per second against a website claim of more than 1,000, and its token down more than 80% from its peak.
Who is actually using them?
The usage data is patchy, dated and hard to compare, which is itself a finding. The independent figures we found describe small networks next to the stablecoin market as a whole. Tempo’s numbers a few weeks after launch were about 5,600 daily users and roughly $3 million in locked value, according to Protos citing Artemis and DefiLlama, and the Defiant counted about 3.9 million cumulative transactions and 177,000 addresses by late May. Tempo’s homepage claims more than $36 billion in annualized payment volume, but gives no date or audit. Stable’s pre-launch campaign claimed more than $2 billion in deposits from over 24,000 wallets, yet DefiLlama showed $19.32 million in stablecoins on the chain on October 27; a pre-launch deposit pledge and the balance on a live chain are different measures, but the gap is large. We found no dated independent figure for Tempo from October.
Stablecoins are going multi-chain
A different signal arrived October 27. Payments infrastructure firm zerohash said its partners can now use Open Standard’s OUSD stablecoin on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo for treasury, funding, payouts and payins. Open Standard, whose founding partners include Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, announced OUSD on September 30, with Bridge, a Stripe company, issuing it. Launching on four chains at once suggests issuers want reach more than loyalty to one network; that reading is ours, not a sourced claim.
The regulatory backdrop
On October 21, the OCC finalized its GENIUS Act rules for permitted payment stablecoin issuers, effective January 18, 2027, covering reserves, redemption and capital, with anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules to follow separately. The rules govern issuers and service providers; we could not confirm whether the law reaches the chains themselves. For the background, see our report on the Fed’s stablecoin rules and our GENIUS Act versus MiCA comparison.
Open questions
Adoption is the biggest: announcements have outrun measured activity so far. Fragmentation is the next. A dollar token on one issuer-aligned chain does not natively interact with another’s, so bridges and shared standards matter. And a stablecoin that lives on many chains gives users options, but it also gives regulators more surfaces to supervise.
Why it matters
Stablecoins are already among crypto’s most used products, and these chains are bets on where the next stage of that usage will run. The test is not launch-day volume. It is whether businesses keep settling real payments on a network after the incentives fade, and whether the chains talk to each other. We will update as better usage data appears. This is reporting, not investment advice.
Further reading
- CoinDesk: Stripe-led payments blockchain Tempo goes live
- Protos: Stripe’s Tempo blockchain raised $500M, has lower TPS than Bitcoin
- The Defiant: Tempo hits 3.9 million transactions in two months
- The Block: Circle launches Arc mainnet
- The Block: Stable launches mainnet and native token
- CoinDesk: Plasma’s XPL token crashes 80%
- DefiLlama: stablecoins on Stable
- Open Standard: OUSD is live
- Global FinTech Series: zerohash brings OUSD live across its network
- OCC: bulletin on final GENIUS Act issuer rules
Frequently asked
What is a stablecoin blockchain?
It is a blockchain designed mainly to move stablecoins, usually by letting users pay fees in a stablecoin instead of a volatile token and by building in payment and compliance features. Examples include Tempo, Circle’s Arc, Stable and Plasma. See our stablecoin glossary entry.
Which stablecoin chains are live?
Plasma launched on September 25, 2025, Stable on December 8, 2025, Tempo on March 18, 2026 and Circle’s Arc on September 16, 2026, according to the sources linked in this article.
How much are these chains being used?
Independent figures are patchy and not directly comparable. Examples include about $19.32 million in stablecoins on Stable on October 27 per DefiLlama, and about 3.9 million cumulative transactions on Tempo by late May per The Defiant. Company-reported figures, such as Tempo’s $36 billion annualized volume claim, are undated and unaudited.
What is OUSD?
OUSD, or Open USD, is a stablecoin announced by Open Standard on September 30, 2026 and issued by Bridge, a Stripe company. It runs on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo, and zerohash said on October 27 that its partners can now use it.
Do the GENIUS Act rules apply to these blockchains?
The OCC’s final rules, issued October 21 and effective January 18, 2027, cover stablecoin issuers and service providers on reserves, redemption and capital. We could not confirm whether the law reaches the underlying blockchains themselves.