The following is a guest post and opinion from John deVadoss, Co-Founder of the InterWork Alliancez.
The stablecoin market is converging on two power centers: brand-name stables issued by firms consumers already trust, and “fintech L1s” — base layers purpose‑built or tightly controlled by regulated fintechs. Everything else will orbit these because they maximize profits, defensibility, and distribution while fitting comfortably inside the policy perimeter.
Brand stables win first on distribution. Payments is a scale game. If a dollar token can be dropped into an existing wallet with millions of KYC’d users, plugged into merchant networks, and supported by compliance teams, it acquires liquidity faster than any crypto‑native alternative. The cost of acquiring a new transacting user approaches zero when the stable is just another balance type in an app people already open daily.
Second, brand stables monetize at scale. They sit on large, low‑cost, sticky balances and invest reserves in high‑quality short‑term assets. That float is a durable revenue stream, more dependable than volatile trading fees. On top, issuers can layer payment revenues: cross‑border FX spread, merchant acceptance fees, treasury services for platforms, and white‑label programs for partners. The combination of float income and payments economics makes brand stables a self‑financing growth engine.
Third, the moat is regulatory. Household‑name issuers already maintain licenses, bank relationships, audits, and sanctions controls. They know how to answer supervisory exams and file suspicious activity reports. That turns policy risk into a competitive advantage. As stablecoin statutes and rules mature — from reserve composition to redemption rights — compliance becomes more of a wall that keeps poorly capitalized entrants out.
Policy is shaping product design. Expect brand stables to likely be multi‑chain but centrally controlled, with blacklist and freeze functions, transparent attestations, bankruptcy‑remote reserve structures, and explicit redemption windows. Messaging standards that carry Travel‑Rule data and screening hooks will be standard. These are not nice‑to‑haves; they will be table stakes for regulators, and the winners will ride this trend.
If brand stables are the money, fintech L1s are the rails. Fintechs learned that renting blockspace from general‑purpose chains exposes them to fee volatility, MEV extraction, governance whiplash, and uneven compliance. Owning the base layer lets them bake policy into the protocol: whitelisted validators, embedded identity, enforceable Travel‑Rule messaging, and deterministic compliance actions. It also delivers predictable fees, fast finality, and upgrade paths aligned with regulated use cases.
Control of the base layer re‑bundles the economics. Fintech L1s capture transaction fees, shape or internalize MEV, and direct sequencer revenue. Those revenues can subsidize near‑zero fees while still rewarding validators and partners. Incentives align: builders and regulated nodes are paid to add throughput, not extract rent. Distribution will take care of the rest: fintechs that touch payroll, remittances, acquiring, or wallets can make their chain the default — no new wallets, instant on/off‑ramps — with the native stable as the unit of account.
What doesn’t win? Algorithmic or undercollateralized stables — misaligned with policy and fragile in stress. Crypto‑collateralized stables will likely persist, but capital intensity limits mainstream use. Generic public L1s are still relevant for open finance, but without embedded compliance and owned distribution, their payment share caps out. CBDCs will move slowly; privacy and design trade-offs loom; expect them to coexist as wholesale settlement infrastructure and public money, not retail rails (ironically, stablecoins that are blessed by policymakers will likely become the de facto ‘retail CBDC’ in those jurisdictions).
Compete on UX, credit, and vertical software — new entrants cannot fight distribution and cannot take on compliance head‑on. If you can’t be a brand stable or a fintech L1, integrate with them. Offer programmable escrow, working‑capital credit, payroll, and cross‑border apps that exploit instant settlement. For regulators, harmonize reserve, disclosure, and redemption standards, push for interoperability at the messaging layer, and support market experimentation with public‑permissioned models and accountable node sets.
Incumbent banks across the globe face a choice: become essential service providers — custodians, reserve managers, issuers of tokenized deposits, validator nodes — or watch deposits migrate to fintech‑native monetization models. The prize is recurring float income plus control of modernized payment rails.
The through‑line is simple: profits fund resilience, compliance builds moats, and distribution decides the winners.
The end game is an assemblage of brand‑name monies riding on fintech‑owned base layers.