Brale, a company building infrastructure for stablecoins, is launching a new system to make it easier to transfer the growing number of different stablecoins between various blockchains. They believe this will solve a key problem currently hindering the growth of the stablecoin industry.
Called ION Protocol, this system lets different stablecoins transfer between various blockchains. It works by destroying tokens on one blockchain and creating the same number of new tokens on another. A key difference from many other blockchain bridges is that it doesn’t need pre-filled funds on each blockchain it supports.
While the $300 billion stablecoin market is dominated by Tether’s USDT and Circle Internet’s USDC, new participants are piling in. Banks, fintechs, crypto firms and asset managers are increasingly issuing their own branded tokens for payments, settlements and tokenized assets.
CoinGecko currently monitors over 350 cryptocurrencies linked to real-world assets like traditional currencies, highlighting the rising demand for systems that can connect this increasingly divided market. Brale believes the current methods for these cryptocurrencies to work together won’t be sufficient as more issuers create their own unique versions.
Stablecoin scaling problem
According to founder and CEO Ben Milne, the company works with over 100 stablecoin projects on more than 30 different blockchains. Many of their clients handle billions of dollars in payments each month, but don’t need to hold large amounts of stablecoins because these tokens are built for everyday transactions, not long-term investment.
Transferring digital assets between different blockchains usually involves using liquidity pools or creating ‘wrapped’ versions of those assets, which means funds need to be held on each blockchain you want to use. As more blockchains and stablecoins emerge, the amount of capital needed to do this also increases.
According to Milne, the biggest obstacle to creating more customized stablecoins is a lack of available funds to support them. He believes there simply isn’t enough capital globally to overcome this issue.
Currently, it’s becoming difficult to maintain enough funds to support trading of every stablecoin across all blockchains, especially as more stablecoins are created. To address this, ION is using a system similar to how Circle (the company behind USDC) moves tokens between blockchains. This approach isn’t limited to just one stablecoin; it can be used by any stablecoin issuer that joins the network.
This new system is launching with support from companies like Monad, Rain, Coinflow, Turnkey, Etherfuse, Spark, and Canton. It’s starting with testing on a test network before becoming widely available.
2026-07-29 18:42