A New $300 Billion Blue Ocean: Three Main Threads of the Stablecoin Ecosystem

The stablecoin sub-sector is moving from concept to reality, from speculation to application.

Written by: Biteye Core Contributor Louis

Edited by: Biteye Core Contributor Denise

Introduction: A Historic Turning Point for the Stablecoin Ecosystem

In 2024-2025, the global stablecoin market is experiencing unprecedented explosive growth. As of October, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has surpassed $300 billion, up from $166.3 billion at the end of 2024, representing an annual growth rate of 82.9%. This growth not only sets a new historical record but also marks a fundamental shift for stablecoins from marginal speculative tools to mainstream financial infrastructure.

Current market stablecoin supply and trading volume data

A historic breakthrough in the regulatory environment has provided strong momentum for this growth: In July 2025, the US GENIUS Act was officially signed into law, establishing the first federal-level stablecoin payment framework. Meanwhile, the EU's MiCA regulation came fully into effect in December 2024, laying a solid foundation for the standardized development of the stablecoin industry.

Stablecoin growth after the GENIUS Act

Although USDT and USDC still dominate, their market share has dropped from 91.6% to 83.6%. The stablecoin market is quietly changing, with emerging stablecoin projects rising rapidly, such as:

• Ethena's USDe market cap reaches $11 billion
• PayPal's PYUSD market cap surpasses $2.76 billion
• RWA-backed stablecoin market size reaches $35 billion, with annual growth of 46%

Market share of various stablecoins

Dedicated Stablecoin Blockchains: An Infrastructure Revolution

Traditional blockchains have shown significant pain points when handling stablecoin transactions: Ethereum's high gas fees often reach tens of dollars, and transaction confirmation times range from seconds to minutes; while Tron has lower fees, it faces centralization risks and technical limitations.

The new generation of dedicated stablecoin blockchains has achieved qualitative breakthroughs through technological innovation. These blockchains generally support 1000+ TPS high throughput, zero or ultra-low fees, and sub-second transaction confirmation. More importantly, they design stablecoins as native gas tokens, completely eliminating the impact of cryptocurrency price volatility on user experience.

Plasma: The Flagship Project of the Tether Ecosystem

As a leading project in the sector, Plasma has raised a total of $75.8 million, including a $20.5 million Series A round led by Bitfinex and Framework Ventures in February 2025, with participation from well-known investors such as Peter Thiel and Bybit. After the mainnet test launch on September 25, 2025, TVL quickly reached $5.3 billion.

On the technical side, Plasma adopts a customized PlasmaBFT consensus mechanism, achieving sub-second finality and processing capacity of over 2000 TPS. Its core innovation lies in the Paymaster system, enabling truly zero-fee USDT transfers, while supporting custom gas tokens and confidential payment features. The project has integrated Chainlink oracles and built a complete DeFi ecosystem by bridging non-custodial Bitcoin (pBTC).

Stable: Institutional-Grade USDT Optimization Solution

Stable positions itself as "real-world payment rails," focusing on institutional-grade USDT applications. In July 2025, the project secured $28 million in seed funding, jointly invested by Franklin Templeton, Hack VC, PayPal Ventures, and Bitfinex. The project uses StableBFT consensus, supports 10k TPS and second-level finality, while maintaining EVM compatibility.

Stable's technical highlight is using USDT as the native gas token, achieving zero-fee P2P transfers through account abstraction. Enterprise features include batch transfer aggregation, compliant private transfers, and cross-chain USDT0 support. The project has integrated PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, focusing on fiat on/off ramps and debit card issuance.

Arc: Circle's Exclusive Ecosystem

Developed by Circle, Arc is positioned as the "home of stablecoin finance," deeply integrated with the Circle ecosystem. The project uses USDC as the native gas token, ensuring a predictable USD-denominated fee structure. Technically, it adopts the Malachite BFT consensus engine, supporting 3000 TPS and sub-second finality.

Arc's uniqueness lies in its built-in FX engine, supporting quote-based stablecoin conversion and optional privacy features for compliant shielding. The project is also exploring reversible USDC transactions to address fraud issues and is collaborating with the German Stock Exchange to promote adoption in the EU market.

In terms of funding scale and technological progress, Plasma holds a leading edge thanks to Tether ecosystem support and the earliest mainnet launch. Stable builds differentiated competitiveness through institutional positioning and PayPal cooperation, while Arc relies on Circle's compliance advantage and USDC ecosystem status. All three projects use BFT consensus mechanisms, which are more suitable for payment scenarios compared to the probabilistic finality of traditional PoS.

Yield-Bearing Stablecoins: Innovative Yield Models

Yield-bearing stablecoins embed returns directly into the stablecoin, providing users with a yield experience that surpasses traditional bank savings.

Ethena USDe

USDe's market cap soared from $86 million in January 2024 to $11.04 billion in October 2025, an astonishing increase of 13,750%, making it the world's third-largest stablecoin.

USDe's technical innovation lies in maintaining stability through a delta-neutral strategy, staking assets such as ETH and WBTC while opening hedged futures positions on exchanges to create a directionless risk exposure. sUSDe provides holders with an annualized yield of 2.56%-3.72%, with returns sourced from Ethereum staking rewards, perpetual contract funding rates, and stablecoin fixed income.

Sky Ecosystem

The Sky ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO) has reshaped the decentralized stablecoin lending market through brand upgrades and product innovation. USDS, as a reward-based stablecoin, has reached a market cap of $8 billion and provides users with a 4.75% annualized yield through the Sky Savings Rate mechanism.

Returns come from protocol surplus, including lending fees and liquidation income, distributed to savings users via the SSR mechanism. The project has also launched the Endgame plan for SubDAO restructuring, offering different services through specialized sub-protocols such as Spark, Grove, and Keel.

Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure: Reshaping Global Finance

In 2025, stablecoin cross-border payment processing volume reached $46 trillion, equivalent to over 50% of Visa's throughput. Traditional cross-border payment fee structures are typically 2-7%, including transfer fees, exchange rate spreads, and intermediary costs, while stablecoins can reduce costs to 0.5-2%, saving 50-80% in high-frequency cross-border scenarios. More importantly, stablecoin settlement times have been reduced from the traditional 3-5 business days to under 3 minutes, greatly reducing pre-funding requirements and cash flow interruptions.

BVNK's Strong Rise

As a stablecoin infrastructure provider, BVNK achieved strong business growth in 2025, processing over $20 billion in annual transaction volume, mainly serving enterprise clients such as Worldpay, Flywire, and dLocal. Citi Ventures made a strategic investment in BVNK in October 2025, supporting its global stablecoin payment rail expansion. At the same time, Coinbase and Mastercard are in negotiations to acquire BVNK, with a valuation of $1.5-2.5 billion, which would be the largest stablecoin acquisition in history, highlighting its core position in enterprise-level stablecoin payments. 

Stripe's Innovative Strategy

Stripe has launched a stablecoin subscription payment feature, supporting USDC automatic debits on Base and Polygon chains, targeting the needs of AI and SaaS companies. This feature halves settlement costs, and AI companies report that 20% of payment volume has shifted to stablecoins. Stripe has also launched the Open Issuance platform to help enterprises issue custom stablecoins and integrated AI agent payment tools.

Stablecoin AI Integrated Applications: The Future of Finance

With the rise of the AI agent economy, traditional API keys and subscription models can no longer meet the needs of autonomous machine-to-machine transactions, giving rise to payment protocols and infrastructure optimized specifically for AI agents.

KITE AI: Building the Layer-1 for the Agent Internet

KITE AI, as a leading project in this field, is committed to building the first Layer-1 blockchain optimized for the AI agent economy. KITE completed an $18 million Series A round led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst.

The project's core innovation lies in three technological pillars: the encrypted agent identity system (AIR - Agent Identity Resolution), programmable permission management, and on-chain attribution intelligent proof (PoAI). AIR, as an agent app store, solves the trust problem between AI agents, allowing developers to deploy custom agents and access the ecosystem market through a low-code interface.

Recently, KITE and Brevis announced a strategic partnership, leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology to enhance the transparency and autonomy of agent identity and payment modules. The first batch of modules will be deployed on BNB Chain, with subsequent expansion to KITE L1 to achieve cross-chain proof relays.

x402 Protocol: Redefining the HTTP Payment Standard

The x402 protocol is jointly promoted by technology giants such as Coinbase, Google, and Cloudflare. When a client (such as an AI agent or application) accesses a protected resource, the server returns a 402 status code and payment details in JSON format, including amount, currency, and recipient address. The client then constructs a signed payment transaction and resends the request with the X-PAYMENT header. Third-party facilitators such as Coinbase verify the on-chain payment, after which the server grants access to the resource. The entire process achieves trustless execution, with payments settled on-chain to ensure auditability.

The technical advantage of x402 lies in its native HTTP integration and extremely low transaction costs. USDC settlements based on Base can be completed in 2 seconds, with gas fees below $0.0001 and zero protocol fees.

Investment Outlook and Risk Assessment

The stablecoin sub-sector is moving from concept to reality, from speculation to application. Among the four emerging tracks, dedicated stablecoin blockchains demonstrate the clearest investment value. Plasma, backed by the Tether ecosystem and validated by $5.3 billion TVL, has a clear technological moat. As enterprise-level payment demand explodes, such infrastructure projects are expected to command premium valuations. Enterprise payment solutions benefit from improved regulatory environments, and BVNK's $1.5-2.5 billion acquisition valuation reflects the recognition of stablecoin infrastructure by traditional financial giants. While AI integrated applications are still in the early stages, the speed of technological innovation and scenario validation has exceeded expectations, making them suitable for investors with higher risk appetites. Yield-bearing stablecoins have the most complex risk-reward profile, and the de-pegging risk of synthetic models under extreme market conditions cannot be ignored.

Regulatory risk remains the biggest variable. Although the GENIUS Act and MiCA regulations provide a framework for industry development, specific implementation rules and enforcement standards are still evolving. Stablecoin projects need to continuously monitor compliance costs and policy changes. Competitive risk is intensifying as traditional financial giants enter the space. Strategic moves by companies such as Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard will reshape the market landscape, and emerging projects need to maintain a leading edge in technological innovation and ecosystem building.

Investing in the new stablecoin sector requires finding a balance among technological innovation, regulatory compliance, and market demand. As key projects go live in 2025 and regulatory frameworks become clearer, this round of stablecoin infrastructure upgrades is expected to reshape the global payment landscape and bring substantial returns to early participants.