A few months back, during the holiday period, I was executing a modest arbitrage trade—shifting some USDC between chains to capture a small yield differential. Nothing elaborate. Just capital moving, an opportunity seized, and done.
What should have been straightforward quickly became frustrating. Fees appeared where I hadn't anticipated them, and a brief surge in network activity pushed confirmation times well beyond a minute.
It wasn't catastrophic. But it lingered in my mind.
The entire purpose of stablecoins is to be unremarkable. They should work so seamlessly that you never give them a second thought. Yet here we are, in an era where transferring "stable" value still carries that familiar pause. Will the fees suddenly spike? Will the bridge bottleneck? Will this settle on schedule?
That friction isn't a coincidence. The majority of blockchains in existence were never architected with stablecoins as a priority.
