Do Stripe, Circle L1s refute the Solana thesis?
Institutions launching their own L1s isn’t good for Solana — but it’s just as bad for everyone else
Color4260/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Corporate blockchains have never looked so good.
In rapid succession, news broke that both payments giant Stripe and stablecoin darling Circle would be building their own layer-1 blockchains. While major companies coming onchain theoretically poses a competitive threat to all existing L1s, there may be reason to believe the news is particularly troublesome for Solana’s vision that “everything can fit in one computer.”
Stripe and Circle’s chains — named Tempo and Arc, respectively — are set to be EVM-based, which some Ethereum boosters were quick to chalk up as bullish for Ethereum. That’s mostly engagement bait nonsense, in this newsletter writer’s view.
The EVM is a software environment. In my mind, the only way it directly implicates ETH the asset is by way of gas fees, but Circle is using USDC for gas fees. In Stripe’s case, it’s hard for me to imagine that the online payments behemoth won’t fight tooth and nail to pay as little in Ethereum gas fees as possible. Plus, both Stripe and Circle could put in jeopardy Ethereum’s mantle as the blockchain for stablecoins.
You have to squint a little bit to see why initiatives like Robinhood’s layer-2 would necessarily be bullish for ETH the asset. You may have to close your eyes fully to argue these EVM L1s are bullish ETH.
Still, Tempo or Arc seeing significant success could also turn out to be pretty bad for Solana, which is now 0/2 in the sweepstakes for big fintechs coming onchain this market cycle.
“Big companies launching L1s is kind of a rejection of the L2 thesis, but it’s even more of a rejection of the Solana thesis,” said mteam, the pseudonymous co-founder of Ethereum infrastructure firm Spire Labs.
When I asked them to elaborate further, mteam added: “I think the Solana thesis is more like this: Apps will want a shared state layer and thus will choose not to launch their own chains if they don’t need to. Any sort of L1 OR L2 premium being important to apps/infra/institutions looks to me like that thesis is even further from the truth vs. Ethereum’s L2 thesis.”
Basically, if major firms launch blockchains rather than launching apps on Solana’s blockchain, then the L2 thesis — which basically says most blockchain activity will take place on layer-2s settling to Ethereum — is less wrong than the Solana thesis.
“[This] is nonsense,” Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz said in response to mteam’s post. “It’s like saying ‘Yeah, the girl I love didn’t marry me, but she also didn’t marry another guy I don’t like and that’s worse for him!’”
I also think the bullish EVM L1 story lacks a value accrual mechanism for ETH — why would Stripe or Circle care about ether as money or a reserve currency? But, sure: The Solana thesis has not exactly been vindicated by where institutions have been deploying recently.
Although it may not really matter. Large firms approach blockchain with a range of seriousness and technical chops, and just because a big name announces a chain does not mean that chain will be a commercial success. Remember Soneium?
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
