Within the professional fintech community, perceptions of stablecoins are shifting: they are no longer just standalone digital assets but elements of a broader technical architecture. Researcher Marcel van Oost describes them as a technological stack encompassing issuance, settlement, infrastructure, and distribution, with companies increasingly building solutions across the entire chain rather than at a single level.
The Evolution of Stablecoins
Previously, stablecoins were often seen as independent coins, but now they are positioned as part of a platform for settlements and services. According to Marcel van Oost, this means combining issuance, settlement, infrastructure, and distribution into a unified model where issuance is no longer an experiment but a product solution. Simultaneously, payment-oriented settlement networks and new approaches to delivering services to end-users are emerging, reflecting an overall industry trend and similar expert views on fintech impact, fintech impact.
Components of the Financial Stack
Within the stack, stablecoin issuance ceases to be merely a technical operation and becomes a product with specific requirements for settlement and distribution. Infrastructure providers take on blockchain complexities: this includes asset custody, compliance issues, card issuance, and process "orchestration" between ecosystem links. Meanwhile, distribution makes stablecoin usage almost invisible to the end-user, enhancing convenience and scalability of solutions, which is also reflected in commercial practices like supporting stablecoins for top-ups, stablecoin support.
Challenges and Solutions
The key challenge is locked liquidity in prefunded accounts, which renders end-to-end stack integration meaningless. Representatives from Bloquo Finance emphasize that if funds remain locked in advance, integration benefits are nullified. They note that a truly end-to-end model is only possible with FX conversion at settlement, immediate fund availability, and transaction finality independent of banking hours. This demands attention to settlement architecture and liquidity management, including integration scenarios with TradFi, TradFi integration.
The Future of Stablecoins
Onchain finance advocates anticipate a gradual shift of business processes into blockchain environments, where stablecoins become an invisible yet critically important infrastructure layer. In this model, value will accumulate less in the coins themselves and more with organizations controlling the "orchestration" of issuance, settlement, compliance, and distribution. Such centralized process management and a functional liquidity model will determine how foundational stablecoins become for onchain finance.
Why This Matters
If you mine and want to convert earnings into stablecoins or use them for settlements, pay attention to fund availability and conversion terms offered by providers. Locked liquidity or delays in finality may restrict withdrawals or exchanges, even if the coin itself is technically stably pegged to fiat. Understanding who controls orchestration and where liquidity is held helps assess real risks when working with specific services.
What to Do?
- Check where the provider holds liquidity and whether prefunded accounts are used; avoid services with opaque models.
- Choose providers supporting FX conversion at settlement and immediate fund availability if quick withdrawals matter to you.
- Evaluate which organization controls process orchestration, as this affects settlement reliability and compliance.
- Maintain a basic level of payment channel diversification to reduce risks if one settlement route becomes temporarily unavailable.