Brale, a stablecoin infrastructure firm, is implementing a compatibility protocol designed to put an end to what it says is an industry development bottleneck: moving the rapidly growing number of custom stablecoins across blockchains.
Dubbed the ION protocol, it allows participating stablecoins to move between blockchains by burning tokens on one network and minting an equivalent amount on another. Unlike most blockchain bridges, this model does not require pre-funding liquidity pools in each supported blockchain.
The $300 billion stablecoin market is dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle ($USDC), but new entrants are emerging. Banks, fintech companies, cryptocurrency firms, and asset managers are increasingly issuing their own branded tokens for payments, settlements, and tokenized assets.
Data provider CoinGecko already tracks over 350 coins whose value is pegged to a real-world asset such as fiat currency, highlighting the growing need for infrastructure to connect an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. Brale argues that today's compatibility model will not scale as more issuers introduce their own versions.
The Stablecoin Scaling Problem
"The company supports over 100 stablecoin programs across more than 30 blockchains", said Ben Milne, founder and CEO of Brale.
Many of its clients process billions of dollars in monthly payments while maintaining relatively small stablecoin balances, as their tokens are designed for transactions, not investments.
Moving assets between blockchains typically relies on liquidity pools or wrapped tokens, requiring capital to be locked up in each supported network. As the number of stablecoins and blockchains grows, so does the need for capital.
"Liquidity between stablecoin programs is barrier No. 1 to scaling individual stablecoins," Milne said. "There isn't enough capital in the world to solve this problem."
Due to insufficient capital to create deep liquidity pools for every stablecoin on every blockchain, the current model becomes unsustainable as issuance accelerates. Instead, ION applies a "burn-and-mint" approach, similar to Circle's ($USDC) Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), extending the model to any participating stablecoin issuer rather than a single token.
The protocol will debut with partners such as Monad, Rain, Coinflow, Turnkey, Etherfuse, Spark, and Canton, initially on a testnet and then more broadly.
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