“Tether’s favorite” botched its debut—can Stable turn the tide?

Author: Jae, PANews

Another stablecoin branded as the “Tether protégé” has officially launched, but the market doesn’t seem to be buying in.

On the evening of December 8, the much-anticipated stablecoin-specific public chain Stable officially launched its mainnet and the STABLE token. As a Layer 1 deeply incubated by the core team of Bitfinex and Tether, the “Tether protégé” narrative attracted widespread market attention as soon as Stable debuted.

However, against the backdrop of tightening market liquidity, Stable didn’t have a stellar debut like its competitor Plasma. Not only did its price languish, but it also fell into a trust crisis over alleged insider trading. Is Stable planning to rebound after a weak start, or will it continue to underperform?

STABLE drops 60% from launch high, mired in insider trading trust crisis

Before Stable went live, market sentiment was quite optimistic. The project’s two rounds of pre-deposits totaled over $1.3 billion, with around 25,000 participating addresses and an average deposit of about $52,000 per address, showing strong user interest. This was especially rare during a period of overall market downturn, indicating a high level of trust in the “Tether-backed” brand and expectations that STABLE’s debut could recreate the wealth effect of Plasma.

According to prediction market Polymarket, the market once estimated there was an 85% chance that the FDV (fully diluted valuation) of the STABLE token would exceed $2 billion.

However, the “hot must die” rule proved true once again.

STABLE’s performance on its TGE (Token Generation Event) day was disappointing. The opening price was around $0.036, briefly peaking at nearly $0.046, then dropping over 60% to a low of $0.015. As of 9 PM on December 9, STABLE’s FDV had shrunk to $1.7 billion, with thin liquidity and few willing buyers.

It’s worth noting that top CEXs (centralized exchanges) such as Binance, Coinbase, and Upbit have not yet listed the STABLE token on their spot markets. Their absence has limited STABLE’s reach to retail investors, further restricting its liquidity.

The sharp drop in STABLE’s price also sparked heated discussion in the community.

DeFi researcher @cmdefi commented: Expectations for Stable are relatively low. The project showed various amateur mistakes at launch, raising concerns about their professionalism.

Crypto KOL @cryptocishanjia pointed out: The crowd is more willing to pay for new narratives. When the market already has a top player (Plasma), consensus on a second one (Stable) grows, reducing profit margins.

Former VC @Michael_Liu93 bluntly said: Stable’s pre-market $3 billion paired with an inflated FDV make it a good candidate for long-term shorting. Tight supply control (no airdrop, no presale, no KOL round) does not equal upward price pressure, but since it’s not listed on top CEXs yet, a reversal could happen.

Additionally, many users brought up controversy over pre-deposits before the Stable mainnet launch. In the first pre-deposit round, a whale wallet deposited hundreds of millions of USDT before the official opening time, raising strong suspicions of unfairness and insider trading from the community. The team did not respond directly but proceeded to launch a second round of pre-deposits.

This event created a paradox for the Stable narrative: its value proposition is to provide transparent, reliable, and compliant infrastructure. Yet, at the outset, it encountered suspected insider trading, undermining community trust and potentially impacting its long-term narrative.

USDT as Gas Fee Optimizes Payment Experience, Tokenomics Raise Concerns

Stable’s architecture is designed for maximum transaction efficiency and user-friendliness.

Stable is the first L1 to use USDT as its native gas fee, offering an almost gas-free user experience. This design is crucial for minimizing user friction. Users can pay transaction fees with the medium of exchange itself (USDT) instead of managing a highly volatile governance token. This enables sub-second settlement and minimal fees, particularly suitable for everyday transactions and institutional payments that demand price stability and predictability.

Stable uses the StableBFT consensus mechanism, a customized DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) model based on CometBFT (formerly Tendermint), and is fully EVM-compatible. StableBFT ensures transaction finality through Byzantine Fault Tolerance, meaning once confirmed, transactions are irreversible—crucial for payments and settlement. Additionally, StableBFT supports nodes processing proposals in parallel, ensuring the network achieves both high throughput and low latency to meet the demands of a payment network.

Stable secured strong capital backing from the start. The project raised $28 million in a seed round led by Bitfinex and Hack VC. Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether/Bitfinex, serves as an advisor, fueling speculation about a close strategic relationship between Stable and stablecoin giant Tether.

Stable CEO Brian Mehler previously served as VP of Venture Capital at EOS developer Block.one, managing a $1 billion crypto fund and investing in industry giants like Galaxy Digital and Securitize.

CTO Sam Kazemian, founder of the hybrid algorithmic stablecoin project Frax, has deep experience in DeFi and has advised on US stablecoin legislation.

However, Stable’s original CEO was Joshua Harding, former Head of Investments at Block.one. The project switched leadership without any public announcement or explanation, casting a shadow over Stable’s transparency.

Stable’s tokenomics separate network utility from governance value. The STABLE token’s sole purpose is governance and staking; it is not used for paying any network fees, as all transactions settle in USDT.

Token holders can stake STABLE to become validators and secure the network. They can also vote on key decisions, such as network upgrades, fee adjustments, or introducing new stablecoins. Since they do not share in network revenue, the token’s appeal is limited until the ecosystem matures.

Notably, 50% of the total token supply (10 billion) is allocated to the team, investors, and advisors. Although these tokens are subject to a one-year cliff before linear release, the heavy allocation could exert long-term downward pressure on the token price.

Intense Competition in Stablecoin Public Chains, Execution Will Be Key

Stable faces extremely fierce market competition. In today’s multi-chain landscape, Polygon and Tron have large retail user bases for low-cost remittances in Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, while Solana leverages its high throughput to claim a spot in the payments sector.

More importantly, Stable faces competition from other emerging vertical L1s focused on stablecoin payments. For example, Circle’s Arc aims to be the institutional-grade chain for on-chain treasury, global settlement, and tokenized assets. Stripe- and Paradigm-backed Tempo is also positioned as a payments-oriented public chain, targeting the same vertical.

In payments and settlements, network effects will be the core winning factor. Stable’s success will depend on how quickly it can leverage the USDT ecosystem to attract developers and institutional users and establish a first-mover advantage in large-scale settlements. Without strong execution and market penetration, it could be surpassed by rivals with deeper integration capabilities or stronger compliance backgrounds.

According to its roadmap, the key milestones are enterprise integration and developer ecosystem building in Q4 2025 - Q2 2026. Whether these targets can be achieved will be critical to validating Stable’s value proposition and the viability of a vertical L1. With only about six months from mainnet launch to pilot implementation, Stable must rapidly tackle technical optimization, institutional integration, and ecosystem development. Any execution missteps could further erode market confidence in its long-term potential.

Stable’s mainnet launch signals that stablecoin competition has entered a new stage of infrastructure development. Whether it can achieve its goal of reshaping payment networks will ultimately depend on execution, not narrative.