Author: Blockchain Knight
Over the past few years, the blockchain industry has grappled with an unresolved question: should we build a chain first and then find users, or should we start with users and business needs before deciding whether to build a chain? The development path in recent years has almost entirely followed the former approach.
Launch a new chain, establish an ecosystem fund, attract developers, distribute incentives and airdrops, then find ways to draw users in. This model has become an industry standard over the past few years.
But the problems are becoming increasingly clear: a blockchain can exist without users, and numerous projects can generate no revenue—no matter how impressive the technical parameters, they don’t guarantee that anyone will want to use them. There are far too many examples of this.
But recent actions by Robinhood offer another perspective. Robinhood already has a large user base, a mature trading system, and real capital flows.
Launching the RH chain on this foundation is not about creating a chain for its own sake, but rather about gradually moving existing transactions and assets onto the chain.
Therefore, instead of following the traditional public chain model—progressing step by step from technical development to ecosystem project deployment and then attracting users—it reversed the order: first establishing user demand and trading activity, then introducing the chain as a new infrastructure.
In other words, the chain is not the starting point here, but the result. Similarly, Circle, the stablecoin giant, is taking a similar path with Arc.
According to Circle’s official announcement, Arc is scheduled to launch on mainnet on September 16, positioning itself as an open network for financial markets, with a focus on stablecoins, payments, settlements, and on-chain finance.
For it, the biggest issue isn’t whether people know Circle, but how to get these assets and funds to operate on infrastructure better suited for financial services.
Therefore, Arc is not simply recreating a general-purpose Layer 1. To date, Circle has announced over 100 institutions and ecosystem participants joining Arc’s construction and validation network.
Robinhood has retail investors and trading scenarios, while Circle holds stablecoins, payment networks, and financial institutions.
The two companies have different resources, but their decisions are becoming increasingly similar; once users, funds, and operations reach scale, the chain is no longer just a technical project but may become part of the business infrastructure.
In the past, industry discussions on blockchain often focused on TPS, gas fees, and cross-chain capabilities, but as real financial services begin to move on-chain, demands will become more specific.
Different businesses have varying requirements for speed, cost, privacy, access control, and security. While a general-purpose public blockchain can provide foundational capabilities, it may not be the optimal choice for all financial services.
The future blockchain market may not be dominated by just a few super public chains, nor is it likely that every project will need to launch its own chain.
More likely, some large networks will continue to serve as hubs for open ecosystems and liquidity, while companies with substantial users, assets, or transactions will begin building blockchain networks better suited to their own business needs.
In the future, blockchains themselves may be seen less as standalone products, and users won’t need to care which specific chain they’re using—blockchain may ultimately become just a background component, a trend that is already evident today.