Make Blockchain Great Again

Author: Prathik Desai; Translation: Block unicorn

Preface

Digital payments have traditionally been slow and tedious.

In the past, secure information networks (SWIFT), clearing systems (ACH, RTGS), and card networks could only move funds in batches on business days, and we rarely notice this infrastructure—unless something goes wrong. Users don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, but they do pay hefty spreads and fees for it.

Blockchain has changed all of this, especially in countries with unstable local currencies and weak economies.

For example, a US company sending payments to consultants in South Asia or South America. In such cases, paying with stablecoins can be a game changer. Suppose a US company pays an Indian contractor $1,000.

Traditional remittance platforms charge fees 10 to 70 times higher than blockchains.

There’s also the outgoing wire fee. On top of that, there are intermediary bank fees, and a 1.5% to 3% FX spread when the receiving bank finally converts USD to Mexican pesos or Indian rupees.

This situation isn’t limited to emerging economies. Even businesses looking to get paid by foreign clients may find that after invoicing $1,000, only $950 or less lands in their bank account.

In contrast, a USDC or USDT transfer on Ethereum, Solana, or Tron settles in seconds or minutes, with fees capped at just $0.3. Yet, traditional cross-border payment platforms still dominate. Why?

Because there’s something more important than just payment cost and transfer speed.

Public Ledgers vs. Private Spreadsheets

Traditional payment systems are opaque. Payroll files are only seen by HR, finance, the bank, and perhaps auditors. Others only see funds flowing in and out.

Public blockchains upend this model. When a US company pays a consultant or suppliers in Mexico or India with USDC on Solana, anyone with a block explorer can reconstruct details like salary ranges, vendor lists, and materials costs.

Addresses may be anonymous, but as I’ve written before, with tools from chain analytics companies, clustering wallets into entities and reconstructing address patterns isn’t difficult.

So when you ask a CFO why they don’t just use stablecoins directly for payroll and vendor payments, you get a consistent answer: “We can’t make all our internal economic activity public.”

If payment channels are too transparent, cheap and fast alone isn’t enough.

That’s why the world needs payment solutions with both blockchain advantages and a privacy layer, allowing stablecoins to penetrate deeper into enterprise accounting departments.

Payment-Dedicated Chains

There are already some protocols building such chains.

Stable.xyz is an EVM-compatible, Tether-backed Layer-1 that enables institutions and individuals to make peer-to-peer transfers with sub-second settlement, providing dedicated blockspace to ensure transaction privacy.

Then there’s Circle’s latest network experiment. Through the Circle Payments Network (CPN), the USDC issuer is working on a closed network that connects banks, payment service providers (PSP), and fintechs via a single API, enabling them to move USDC at near-instant settlement speeds while maintaining traditional finance-grade access, compliance, and risk standards.

Celo is an Ethereum Layer-2 that enables stablecoin transfers for less than a cent in fees and around 1-second block times. It also offers a mobile-first user experience with phone number-based addresses. Celo recently added Nightfall, a zero-knowledge privacy layer that lets enterprises conduct private B2B stablecoin payments, masking amounts and counterparties as needed while still allowing audits.

All these experiments aim to solve the same problem: keeping the benefits of public blockchains—global reach, open access, near-instant settlement—while keeping sensitive information confidential.

Adoption of these new payment-dedicated chains is still in the early stages, and the process is far from perfect. But the transformation is underway and unmistakable.

Major financial institutions are joining in. On its Q3 earnings call, Circle executives said CPN has signed early cooperation agreements with major banks including Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, and Santander.

In February 2025, Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion. This acquisition will help the financial infrastructure provider offer businesses faster and cheaper global stablecoin transactions by integrating Bridge’s technology.

Just a glance at Artemis datasets comparing on-chain stablecoin volume to Visa, Automated Clearing House (ACH), and other traditional financial systems shows the gap is closing rapidly.

Over the past three years, adjusted stablecoin transaction volume has gone from lagging Visa to roughly 2.5x Visa’s volume, and from a fraction of ACH’s to nearly half.

The chart clearly shows that stablecoins disrupting traditional payment systems is a question of when, not if.

What’s worth watching is how privacy-first, payment-focused blockchains develop in the future.

If they can settle with stablecoins and help businesses batch payroll via a single API, they’re moving in the right direction. They must also allow auditors to access what they need while preserving privacy.

That’s all for today—see you in the next article.