Market Cold Thoughts: Market Downturn, Who is "Bucking the Trend"?

The recent market trend has been witnessed by everyone. Bitcoin has been fluctuating around $70,000, causing panic among investors, some even anticipating a drop to $60,000. However, during this "bull retreat" period, a project called Stable quietly hit a new all-time high, rising over 40% this week.

Why? Because everyone has finally realized that while hype may fade, as long as someone is alive, they have to use stablecoins for payments.

The current market situation is actually experiencing "deleveraging and squeezing out excess," with funds flowing from those elusive "air coins" to the "money printing machine" track with real demand, namely the stablecoin-native public chain — Stablechain.

The current focus of everyone: Stablecoin Infrastructure

In the past few years, stablecoins have been more of a "liquidity tool" rather than a "native application layer." The volume of USDT and USDC has approached or even exceeded the circulation of many national currencies (USDT circulation has exceeded $190 billion, covering over 350 million users), but the underlying settlement still heavily relies on general-purpose blockchains such as Ethereum.

The issues are:

· Gas fees priced in ETH naturally mismatch with stablecoin payment logic;

· Severe fluctuations in peak-hour fees are unsuitable for high-frequency, small-value settlements;

· High cross-chain friction increases enterprise operational costs;

· Meeting the needs of financial institutions for privacy, compliance, and auditability is challenging.

Therefore, a new sub-track has emerged recently — "Stablechain / Stablecoin-specific public chains," aiming to upgrade stablecoins from an "asset" to a "native payment rail." Key players include:

· Stable (focused on USDT-native settlement and payment infrastructure);

· Plasma (leaning more towards stablecoin clearing networks);

· And several customized chains/Layer-2 solutions around USDC, PYUSD;

Overall, the key variables in this track are not "whose TPS is higher," but:

1) Is there a real payment demand;

2) Is there any institutional-level cooperation;

3) Is the network economy aligned with the stablecoin itself.

Why is Stable Worth Special Attention?

Among the various stablecoin infrastructures, the recent market performance of Stable has been quite noteworthy. On the eve of the mainnet v1.2.0 upgrade on February 4, its native token once reached an all-time high, with a weekly gain of about 43%, peaking at $0.03, with a current market value of about $420 million, FDV exceeding $2.4 billion, significantly ahead of most competitors in the same field.

But what's more interesting is: this wave of trend is not a typical "event hype", but more like a reflection of gradually realized fundamentals.

(1) Product Positioning: From "Transaction Chain" to "Settlement Chain"

Stable's core positioning is not to attract DeFi speculative traffic, but to target real payments, forex settlement, salary disbursement, and corporate fund management. This is in sharp contrast to "general-purpose smart contract platforms" such as Ethereum, Solana, etc.

The key differences are:

1. Stable's native asset is USDT used as Gas (v1.2.0 completely eliminates gUSDT, switching entirely to USDT0);

2. This means that: user fees, corporate settlements, network economic models, all revolve around stablecoins;

3. Essentially reducing the structural friction of "paying fees with volatile assets";

From a payment perspective, this is a more meaningful design choice than simply improving TPS.

(2) v1.2.0 Upgrade: A Key Step towards a More "Production-Ready Network"

The focus of this upgrade is not on showmanship, but on making the network more usable, more reliable, and easier to integrate:

Consensus and Execution:

- Currently using custom StableBFT, emphasizing stability;

- Future plans to evolve to a DAG architecture, with internal testing reaching 200,000 TPS, enough to support enterprise-level batch payments, exchange clearing, and other scenarios.

Financial Institution-Friendly Design:

· Reserve "Institution-Specific Block Space" to prioritize key transactions during peak times;

· Support confidential transfers to protect business privacy while meeting audit requirements;

· Decouple state storage from memory mapping optimization to balance efficiency and security.

Five Key Technical Improvements (More Engineering-Oriented):

1) Native Stablecoin Gas: USDT0 becomes the sole Gas asset, reducing wallet and enterprise integration costs.

2) Observable Staking/Unstaking: Added on-chain signals to avoid application-layer "state guessing."

3) STABLE Token Compatibility Fix: Enhanced reliability of migrating old Solidity contracts.

4) Gas Exemption Mechanism: Support controllable zero-Gas transactions, benefiting payment scenarios but with limits and rate protection.

5) Infrastructure Stability Upgrade: Improved production environment resilience.

Overall, this upgrade is essentially a move from "usable testnet" to "scalable commercial network."

(3) Capital and Ecosystem: The True Strength of Stable

Many public chains rely on incentive subsidies to attract traffic, but Stable takes a different approach: first the payment scenario, then on-chain activity.

1) Crypto-Native Capital Support

Stable is deeply integrated with Bitfinex, which provides liquidity, market resources, and ecosystem synergy. It also receives support from institutions like Morpho, Paxos, Anchorage, covering DeFi, compliant stablecoin issuance, and custody sectors.

2) Traditional Finance Access

Currently, Stable has successfully onboarded several well-known traditional financial institutions, including top global asset management company Franklin Templeton, payment giant PayPal and its venture arm PayPal Ventures, and quantitative trading powerhouse Susquehanna International Group. The endorsement of these heavyweight partners has brought funding and resources to Stable, validating its reliability and long-term potential as a stablecoin payment infrastructure.

Building on this foundation, the most significant signal is that PayPal USD (PYUSD) has officially launched on StableChain. This integration allows PYUSD to achieve permissionless usage, further expanding its distribution channels, utility, and liquidity, bridging the gap between blockchain and traditional payment giants.

This is not just a technical integration but also an "endorsement." If PayPal is willing to operate PYUSD on Stable, it signifies that its infrastructure has met institutional standards.

In addition:

· PXP Financial (handling €300 billion in payments annually)

· Chipper Cash (a leading African cross-border payment platform)

have both joined the ecosystem, indicating that Stable is not only serving Web3 but also aiming to construct cross-border payment rails.

3) Drive by Real Demand, Not Token Incentives

Some key data points:

50+ PSPs are currently integrating into the pipeline, with more coming online subsequently;

Encompassing corporate fund distribution, salary payments, merchant transactions, and other scenarios;

Partner network reach:

· 1 million+ businesses (including Walmart, Amazon Business ecosystem);

· 80 million+ merchants supporting USDT payments;

Over $2 billion in pre-deposits were completed before the public release, demonstrating genuine enterprise interest.

Furthermore, Stable is advancing regulatory communication, collaborating with teams participating in regulated pilots such as Basal Pay and Holdstation to mitigate policy risks.

Stable Project Investment Research Summary

In simple terms, projects like Stable earn through "toll fees." Even in a bear market, essential needs like cross-border trade, salary disbursement, and merchant payments continue unabated. As long as people are still transacting, the network's value will grow.

Short-term Outlook: v1.2.0 Release, New Partnership Announcement, these are all tangible catalysts.

Long-term Outlook: If it can really tackle the payroll business of those one million enterprises, the current market cap is definitely just a starting point.

Trading Recommendation: Stable is not the type of "meme coin get-rich-quick scheme" based on probability, but a dark horse as infrastructure with long-term certainty. In today's market, which values fundamentals and verifiable data, instead of speculating on meme hype without any cash flow support, it's better to focus more on Stable, which has both real settlement transactions and institutional endorsement in a leading position in its field. From a risk-reward perspective, projects with long-term stable development have more cost-effectiveness and investment value.

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