The Stablecoin Chain Wars: Codex’s Bet on On-Chain FX

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Payment chains are heating up. Not every “stablecoin chain” is playing the same game.

Codex cofounder and CEO Haonan Li joins David to map the real landscape: what neutrality looks like in practice, why the bottleneck isn’t TPS but fiat-to-stable friction, and how on-chain FX could pull global flows.

We dig into the Bear-Chain incentive trap. Why Codex chose to build as an Ethereum L2. The case for app-specific rollups that return value to ETH. And the growing split between projects that bundle value toward Ethereum and those that pull it away.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro
1:10 Codex’s Market Positioning
2:24 How Stablecoin Chains Differ
4:55 Neutrality For Chains And Customers
8:11 Codex’s Focus: Fiat Friction & Wholesale FX
14:16 The Golden Goose: On-Chain Transfers Vs On-Ramps
17:49 Liquidity, Demand, Exotics: The Case For On-Chain FX
24:55 Why An Ethereum L2: Technical & Economic Rationale
32:50 Founding Codex, Contrarian Thesis & Focused L2s
40:23 Community Dynamics, Tempo, Bundlers Vs Unbundlers
1:00:16 Closing Thoughts

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RESOURCES

Haonan Li
https://x.com/haonan

Codex
https://www.codex.xyz/

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