Future trillion-dollar stablecoin factories, the era of specialized blockchain production.

The complex process of stablecoin issuance has led to the emergence of professional "foundries". This article will explore how companies such as Paxos and Bridge are behind the future trillion stablecoin market. This article is based on an article written by Sleepy.txt and was compiled, compiled, and written by BlockBeats. (Summary: Reuters: China considers opening up "RMB stablecoin"! The State Council may approve this month) (Background supplement: stablecoins enter the "interest-bearing era": panoramic interpretation of income stablecoins) Bridge, Stripe's stablecoin issuance platform, one of the world's largest online payment infrastructures, launched the native stablecoin MetaMask USD for MetaMask, a wallet application with more than 30 million crypto users (mUSD)。 Bridge is responsible for the entire issuance process, from reserve custody, compliance audits, to smart contract deployment, while MetaMask focuses on polishing the front-end product interface and user experience. This cooperation model is one of the most representative trends in the current stablecoin industry, and more and more brands have begun to choose to outsource the complex issuance process of stablecoins to professional "foundries", just as Apple handed over the production of the iPhone to Foxconn. Since the birth of the iPhone, Foxconn has almost always taken on the core production task. Today, about eighty percent of the world's iPhones have been assembled in China, and more than seventy percent of them are from Foxconn's factories. Zhengzhou Foxconn once accommodated more than 300,000 workers during the peak season and was called "iPhone City". The cooperation between Apple and Foxconn is not a simple outsourcing relationship, but a typical case of modern manufacturing division of labor. Apple focuses its resources on the user side, such as design, system experience, brand narrative and sales channels. Manufacturing does not constitute a differentiator for it, but rather a huge capital expenditure and risk. As a result, Apple never had its own factory, choosing instead to hand over production to professional partners. Foxconn has established core capabilities in these "non-core" links, building production lines from scratch, managing raw material procurement, process flow, inventory rotation and shipment rhythm, and constantly reducing manufacturing costs. It establishes a complete set of industrial processes in three aspects: supply chain stability, delivery reliability and capacity flexibility. For brand customers, this means the underlying guarantee of frictionless expansion. The logic of this model is division of labor. Apple doesn't have to bear the fixed burden of factories and workers, and it can avoid manufacturing risks when the market fluctuates; Foxconn relies on scale effects and multi-brand capacity utilization to extract overall profits from extremely low single profits. The brand focuses on creativity and consumer reach, and the foundry undertakes industrial efficiency and cost management, forming a win-win situation. This isn't just changing the smartphone industry. Since the 2010s, computers, televisions, home appliances and even cars have gradually moved towards OEM mode. Foxconn, Quanta, Wistron, Jabil and other manufacturers have become key nodes in the restructuring of the global manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is modularized and packaged to become a capability that can be operated at scale and sold externally. More than a decade later, this logic began to port into a seemingly unrelated area: stablecoins. Ostensibly, issuing a stablecoin only needs to be minted on-chain. But to really make it work, the work involved is far more complicated than the outside world thinks. Compliance framework, bank custody, smart contract deployment, security audit, multi-chain compatibility, account system access, KYC module integration, these links require long-term investment in financial strength and engineering capabilities. We wrote in How Much Does It Cost to Issue a Stablecoin? This cost structure has been dismantled in detail: if an issuer starts from scratch, the initial investment is often in the millions, and most of them are incompressible rigid expenditures. After the launch, the annual operating cost may even reach tens of millions, covering various modules such as legal, auditing, maintenance, account security and reserve management. Today, companies are packaging these complex processes into standardized services that provide plug-and-play solutions to banks, payment institutions, and brands. They themselves do not necessarily appear in front of the stage, but they can often be seen behind the issuance of a stablecoin. In the world of stablecoins, Foxconn has also begun to appear. "Foxconn" in the stablecoin world In the past, trying to issue a stablecoin almost meant playing three roles at the same time: financial institutions, technology companies, and compliance teams. Project parties need to negotiate with custodian banks, build cross-chain contract systems, complete compliance audits, and even deal with licensing issues in different jurisdictions. For most businesses, such a threshold is too high. The emergence of the "foundry" model is precisely to solve this problem. The so-called "stablecoin foundry" refers to an institution that specializes in providing stablecoin issuance, management and operation services to other enterprises. They are not responsible for building the end-to-end user-facing brand, but rather provide the entire infrastructure needed behind the scenes. These companies are responsible for building the entire infrastructure from front-end wallets and KYC modules to back-end smart contracts, escrow, and auditing. Customers only need to clarify which currency to issue and which markets to launch, and other links can be handed over to the foundry. Paxos played such a role when partnering with PayPal to issue PYUSD: hosting US dollar reserves, responsible for on-chain issuance, and completing compliance docking, while PayPal only needs to display the "stablecoin" option in the product interface. The core value of this model is reflected in three aspects. The first is to reduce costs. If a financial institution wants to build a stablecoin system from scratch on its own, the upfront investment is often millions of dollars. Compliance licensing, technology research and development, security audits, bank cooperation, each link requires individual investment. By standardizing processes, foundries can compress the marginal cost of a single customer much lower than the self-built model. The second is to shorten the time. The launch cycle of traditional financial products is often measured in "years", while stablecoin projects are likely to take 12–18 months to land if they take the path of complete self-research. The foundry model allows customers to launch products in a matter of months. Stably's co-founders have publicly stated that their API access model allows a company to launch a white-box stablecoin in a matter of weeks. The third is transfer risk. The biggest challenge for stablecoins is not technology, but compliance and reserve management. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) have extremely stringent regulatory requirements for custody and reserves. For most businesses looking to test the waters, it's not realistic to take full responsibility for compliance. Paxos has won over big customers like PayPal and Nubank precisely because it holds a New York State trust license, which allows it to legally hold U.S. dollar reserves and assume regulatory disclosure obligations. Therefore, the emergence of stablecoin foundries has changed the entry threshold of the industry to some extent. The high upfront investment that only a few giants could afford can now be broken up, packaged, and sold to more financial or payment institutions in need. Paxos: Make processes into products, compliance into business Paxos' business direction is set early. It does not emphasize brand or market share, but builds capabilities around one thing: turning the issuance of stablecoins into a standardized process that others can buy. The starting point of the story is New York, where in 2015, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) open digital asset licenses, and Paxos became one of the first licensed limited purpose trust companies. That license plate isn't just a symbol...