“Ethereum’s Tron killer” aims to safeguard the legacy blockchain against the proliferation of institution-led alternative Layer 1 blockchains.
Stablecoins have been thrust into the limelight as one of crypto’s killer use cases in 2025, sparking growing institutional adoption, but Codex founder Haonan Li vows to maintain Ethereum’s position as the home of stablecoins.
Ethereum currently dominates the stablecoin supply race with $153 billion in stablecoin market capitalization, followed by Tron with $81 billion. Together, Ethereum and Tron command more than 81% of the total stablecoin market, but upcoming competitors such as Plasma, Stable, Arc, and Tempo are looking to challenge their dominance.
In particular, the Ethereum community has been up in arms since the announcement of Tempo, a Layer 1 stablecoin blockchain developed by Stripe and crypto investment fund Paradigm. Some are upset that Paradigm funded the Ethereum-focused institutional arm, Etherealize, and then went on to build its own Layer 1 blockchain meant to cater to institutions.
Amid the controversy, Li released a strongly worded article on X, claiming that all the new stablecoin chains are “attempts to supplant and attack Ethereum”, and said he’s confident Ethereum and Codex will “crush these competitors.”
Li went on to explain that Ethereum’s history, lack of downtime, and deep liquidity should make it Wall Street’s preferred blockchain. He also mentions how, in their current form, stablecoin flows are bottlenecked by underlying bank transactions that are limited to SWIFT speeds and can take days, while Codex aims to reduce the fiat-to-stablecoin swap time to near zero.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared Li’s article and said he is “Excited to see [Codex] joining the arena as an L2 and thinking explicitly about synergy between itself and Ethereum L1 from day one.”
Codex came out of stealth in April, when it announced a $16 million funding round led by Dragonfly, with participation from other prominent investors like Circle and Coinbase.
