Tether bankrolls two rival blockchains in bid to claw back $2.9bn fee bill
Tether has backed both Plasma and Stable, competing USDT-focused chains, as it seeks to reduce reliance on Tron and Ethereum for settlement.
Tether, issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, has quietly financed two competing blockchain projects built around its own USDT token, according to an analysis published by crypto.news. The dual backing of Plasma and Stable reflects an unusual strategic calculation: rather than choosing a single infrastructure bet, Tether appears to be hedging against its own dependence on external networks it does not control.
At the centre of the strategy is a cost problem rarely discussed in public by the issuer. Tether reportedly pays close to $2.9 billion a year in network fees to the blockchains that host USDT transactions, principally Ethereum and Tron, even as its own annual revenue runs near $5 billion. With roughly $150 billion of USDT in circulation, that fee leakage represents a meaningful drag on what is otherwise one of the most profitable business models in finance, built on Treasury yield earned against dollar reserves.
Two chains, two philosophies
Plasma, backed by Tether-adjacent capital alongside Founders Fund, raised $373 million in an oversubscribed token sale and went live in September. It positions itself as a general-purpose, DeFi-oriented chain with its own native token, a paymaster mechanism that makes USDT transfers free for users, and an ecosystem that brought in protocols including Aave, Ethena and Euler from launch. The chain has since accumulated roughly $551 million in DeFi total value locked.
Stable takes a starkly different approach. Backed by Bitfinex, with Tether’s chief executive serving in an advisory capacity, the project attracted $2 billion in pre-deposits ahead of its mainnet launch on 8 December. Rather than running on a separate native token for transaction fees, USDT itself functions as gas on the network, with transfers free by protocol design. The pitch is aimed squarely at enterprise settlement volume rather than yield-seeking DeFi users, with a total token supply of 100 billion allocated across ecosystem, team, investor and advisor categories.
Tron remains the real target
Neither Plasma nor Stable appears designed primarily to compete with each other. Tron still processes roughly 45% of all USDT in circulation and continues to capture the bulk of fee revenue generated by remittance flows in emerging markets, a position that has so far proven resistant to displacement by either newer chain. By funding two structurally different challengers simultaneously, Tether is effectively running a portfolio strategy: if either chain succeeds in repatriating settlement fees currently paid to Tron and Ethereum validators, the issuer benefits; if both succeed in carving out separate market segments, the benefit compounds.
For European and UK observers, the episode illustrates a broader shift in how dominant stablecoin issuers are moving beyond simple token issuance into direct control of settlement infrastructure. As regulators across the EU and UK continue to scrutinise stablecoin reserve backing and systemic risk under frameworks such as MiCA, the emergence of issuer-controlled blockchains raises fresh questions about concentration risk, governance and who ultimately captures the economics of dollar-denominated payment rails operating well beyond domestic oversight.
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