The most important development in digital assets today is the shift toward enterprises launching their own sovereign blockchains. Stablecoins have matured into the largest use case in crypto, with trillions in annual settlement, but the new story is who controls the ledger the stablecoin is run on. Increasingly, the answer is not Ethereum or Solana, but enterprise-owned Layer 1 (L1) blockchains.

This is why Circle has launched Arc, a purpose-built chain for USDC settlement, and why Stripe is preparing its own Tempo L1 (Blockworks). It is also why Walmart and Amazon are now exploring launching their own stablecoins following the passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act, which created a clear regulatory pathway for payment stablecoin issuance (Business Insider). These moves signal a competitive shift: enterprises prefer to own the rails, and benefit from the stablecoin implementation directly over using third-party blockchains.

Stablecoins have reached global scale, with more than $280B in circulation and upwards of $26T in annual settlement volume, but most of that activity sits on shared infrastructure. On Ethereum, Solana, or Tron, settlement is fast but probabilistic, MEV is uncontrolled, and gas pricing is volatile. For an enterprise like Amazon or Walmart, or a fintech giant like Stripe, this introduces unacceptable counterparty and operational risk.

By launching a sovereign permissioned L1, enterprises gain vertical integration:

As Barry Plunkett, Co-CEO at Cosmos Labs, put it in reference to Circle’s Arc: “Circle will start with what amounts to a Cosmos chain using Proof-of-Authority, with a closed validator set. It’s very cheap to operate.” (Blockworks). Stripe’s Tempo will take a similar approach, optimized for merchant settlement and API-level integration with its existing payment products.

World-leading enterprises are consistently choosing Layer-1 over Layer-2 blockchain solutions to run their core operations and maintain true ownership over the entire stack, eliminating counterparty reliance and vendor / developer lock-in. This reduces operational risk and costs.

Rollups and L2s cannot similarly meet this demand for a number of reasons, including bridge and operator-linked risks that an L1 with native assets doesn’t have, as well as additional counterparty trust assumptions. This leads to significant limitations in both ownership and efficiency, impacting business operations.

Fast, secure and vertically-integrated L1s remove those dependencies. They allow full customization of economics, compliance, and performance. They create enterprise-grade SLAs, guaranteeing settlement within strict policy windows. This is why Circle and Stripe, rather than just spinning up rollups, are building full sovereign chains. As regulation shifts, so can these players adapt their infrastructure to match.

Stablecoins are strategic. For Walmart or Amazon, issuing a branded stablecoin integrates payments directly into their ecosystems. It reduces card network fees, captures yield on reserves, and creates loyalty hooks by tying currency to customer programs.

The GENIUS Act explicitly enables this by defining payment stablecoins as non-securities with clear reserve requirements. Walmart and Amazon are now reported to be exploring stablecoins for these reasons: to reduce dependency on Visa and Mastercard, cut costs, and gain full visibility into payments data (Business Insider).

For Amazon, a stablecoin could unify Prime, AWS, and marketplace payments under one currency. For Walmart, it enables efficient settlement across global suppliers and customer networks. In both cases, the stablecoin becomes a business strategy, not just a financial instrument.

Cosmos was designed to help businesses own their business and financial infrastructure. Its SDK and CometBFT consensus allow enterprises to launch sovereign chains with deterministic finality under one second, throughput of 10,000+ TPS, and validator sets they control. Unlike rollups, Cosmos chains are not dependent on sequencers or base-layer congestion.

This is why Cosmos already hosts critical stablecoin infrastructure:

This represents only a small sample selection of the 250+ enterprises that trust Cosmos to support their long-term operations and serve as their preferred technology partner to power their growth. With more than a decade in operation, Cosmos delivers the battle-tested infrastructure and enterprise-grade performance and scalability capable of securely processing billions of dollars in daily volume, with fast, secure and compliant architecture out-of-the-box.

Owning a stablecoin and the ledger it runs on is critical for the next generation of financial infrastructure and central to a strong vertical integration and monetization strategy.

This is precisely what Cosmos has been building toward. Fully customizable, high-performance, private and compliant blockchain architecture that allows enterprises and institutions to control their own economics and on-chain activities, without counterparty or intermediary dependencies.

Learn more about the Cosmos Stack and core technology.

Sovereign Stablecoins and the Future of Programmable Finance was originally published in Cosmos Ecosystem Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

98 +