Stable — often called StableChain — is a layer 1 blockchain purpose-built around stablecoin payments, backed by Bitfinex and closely tied to Tether. Its defining trick is using USDT itself as the network's gas token, so users can transact without holding a separate volatile asset just to pay fees.
What Stable does
The chain launched mainnet with sub-second finality and fees under a cent, aimed squarely at payments, remittances and institutional stablecoin settlement rather than general-purpose smart contracts. It's EVM-compatible, so existing Ethereum tooling and contracts can be ported over with minimal friction. STABLE, the native token, was introduced through the Stable Foundation as the network's governance and security asset, with a fixed supply of 100 billion tokens and holders expected to participate in protocol decisions and validator security over time.
Before mainnet, the project ran a pre-deposit campaign that pulled in more than $2 billion across two phases from over 24,000 wallets, and it raised a $28 million seed round led by Bitfinex and Hack VC, with Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino among its advisers.
Risks
The chain's entire value proposition is bound to USDT and to Tether and Bitfinex's continued backing — this is about as centralised an origin story as a layer 1 gets, and questions about Tether's reserves and regulatory standing carry directly over to Stable's credibility. USDT-as-gas is elegant in theory but relies on USDT keeping its peg and on Tether facilitating the mechanics smoothly under load.
STABLE launched into a hectic mainnet debut with a sharp token price drop, a reminder that governance tokens for infrastructure chains often struggle to find a stable valuation of their own even when the underlying network works as intended. As a young chain, it also carries the usual early-stage risks: thin validator decentralisation, unproven security under adversarial conditions, and a governance token whose actual voting weight and utility are still being defined.