Ethereum's EVM will be Wall Street's Microsoft Excel moment

Circle and Stripe recently announced their own L1 public chains (Arc and Tempo), both EVM-compatible, with Arc having 20 licensed validators and Tempo likely built using Paradigm's RETH client.
These permissioned L1s are seen as boring by some in crypto, as they diverge from open-source, decentralized ideals, functioning more like private databases for stablecoin settlements.
Key questions remain: Will these chains issue L1 assets (implying decentralization)? Will developers build on them without ownership incentives? Currently, they may just replace traditional settlement backends like Visa or Swift.
Despite their limitations, enterprise L1s benefit the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), as TradFi firms (e.g., Robinhood, Circle, Stripe) now hire EVM developers to modernize their infrastructure.
The EVM is compared to Microsoft Excel for Wall Street—a critical tool for financial firms to avoid disruption by blockchain innovation, indirectly boosting ETH's value as the core asset of the EVM ecosystem.
While the impact on crypto (e.g., ETH, SOL) is unclear, the expansion of EVM adoption reinforces Ethereum's long-term relevance.

Compiled by Felix, PANews

Recently, Circle and Stripe both announced the launch of L1 public chains:

Arc, the new L1 public chain launched by Circle, is an EVM-compatible L1 chain with 20 licensed validators from a regulated and trusted institutional alliance.
Stripe is building a public L1 blockchain, likely using Paradigm’s RETH client, a high-performance Ethereum client built in Rust. Paradigm founder Matt Huang is a member of Stripe’s board of directors and likely contributed significant development work to the Stripe chain (called Tempo).

The recent discussion on crypto Twitter essentially boils down to this: “Is this good or bad for crypto? Is this good or bad for my holdings?”

Personally, I find permissioned L1s extremely boring. The value and “main story” of cryptocurrency lies in open source software, and Ethereum is at the heart of that story.

Building permissioned L1s is so far removed from the main thrust of cryptocurrency that it seems irrelevant. In the case of Circle and Stripe, blockchain technology is being used as a database structure, nothing more.

Will Arc and Tempo issue L1 assets?

If they do, that would imply an intention to decentralize, and these chains would look more interesting. But for now, without further data, it’s reasonable to assume that neither chain will issue L1 assets, but rather will be private intranets used for stablecoin settlements on the backend of front-end applications.

There’s also a law of the art in crypto: if something can issue a token… it will eventually issue a token (like Base), so ignoring this possibility is unrealistic. If these enterprise L1s eventually issue tokens, they’ll be a step closer to open-source, decentralized developer platforms, which is closer to the core story of cryptocurrency.

Will Stripe and Circle try to encourage developers to build on their chains?

Will developers be willing to develop on someone else's blockchain if they aren't rewarded or part-owner of the chain? Stripe already has a large developer community... but that's a community of Web2 developers building Web2 front-ends and e-commerce sites. Will this translate to encouraging Web3 developers to develop on Tempo? Is the value of developing on Tempo greater than on Ethereum or any of its L2 networks?

Perhaps these chains will remain permissioned consortium chains without L1 assets, simply stripping away the business logic backend of Visa, Mastercard, and Swift to build their own settlement networks.

All of these questions have no answers and are still unclear, so I personally think it is too early to discuss whether this is good for BTC, ETH, SOL, or the entire crypto industry.

There is no doubt that these enterprise-grade L1 chains are beneficial to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Here’s a slide from a talk at the Ethereum New York conference this week:

It all started with Robinhood Chain, the first example of a TradFi company building and owning an EVM instance. Robinhood hired EVM developers, and understanding the EVM is now core to Robinhood's business. Now, Circle and Stripe have joined TradFi in hiring and managing EVM talent within their structures.

The point is this: every traditional financial firm involved in cryptocurrency needs to hire EVM developers. For traditional financial firms, understanding the EVM has become a necessity for upgrading their backend logic to adapt to the future of blockchain.

Just as Microsoft Excel supports traditional finance, EVM is the next-generation ledger software that Wall Street needs to enrich its talent pool in order to maintain its market share and avoid being disrupted by innovations on Ethereum.

Once you delve deeper into Ethereum, it becomes clear that all roads ultimately lead to value capture for ETH, and this is one of them. Although very indirect and subtle, the expansion of the EVM empire ultimately leads to increased value for the asset at the center of the EVM: ETH.