Today, I bought a plane ticket for the first time on Ctrip's overseas version using stablecoins:

It automatically pops up the Stablecoin option → generates a payment address → withdraws USDT / USDC from the exchange or pays on-chain → confirmation in about 1 second, or you can scan the QR code directly to pay. The experience is almost indistinguishable from using a credit card, but the settlement occurs on the chain.

I feel very happy! After shouting about the "future of payments" for so many years, this is not just an experimental scenario but a real-world transaction like buying a plane ticket or booking a hotel. It’s a practical combination of "stablecoins + public chain settlement layer + compliant entry."

So, I started thinking: if Ethereum\SOLANA represents the future trend of on-chain payments, then is its ceiling roughly comparable to Visa / Mastercard?

If we roughly benchmark against Visa’s market cap, the corresponding $ETH price would be around $9,500.
But the problem is: the value captured by on-chain payments does not equal the value the chain itself can capture.

In stablecoin payments, the public chain often only earns "settlement fees."
And as Ethereum, L2, and other high-performance chains push settlement costs lower and lower, a real issue arises:
If the chain’s product goal is to make settlement as cheap as possible, what ultimately allows it to capture value?

Relying solely on fees may not be enough.
Especially when settlement costs become negligible, the path to "getting rich from transit fees" will become increasingly thin.

The real difference between chains may ultimately come down to the most fundamental question:
Who do you trust? Where will you place your biggest money, longest contracts, and heaviest assets?

Therefore, I believe the real question is not "Can ETH, SOL be compared to Visa," but rather: in the next ten years, how much value globally will be willing to settle and deposit assets on-chain?

Today, using U to buy a plane ticket has made me more certain that the turning point for crypto payments may not be some grand narrative, but the moment when you unconsciously start "living with it."

PAY truly is the way for blockchain to go mainstream.