On June 24, the stablecoin blockchain Codex announced that the native minting function for USDC is now officially online on its chain. Codex thus becomes the "youngest" blockchain to launch USDC in crypto history. Previously in April, Codex announced the completion of a $15.8 million seed round, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Coinbase and Circle, among other institutions. Rob Hadick, a general partner at Dragonfly, stated that the company invested approximately $14 million in this round.
Why did Circle support Codex so early?
Traditional blockchain infrastructure has limited the development of stablecoins because they often contradict a key characteristic of ideal money: uniformity.
Ideal money is uniform. Regardless of its form, location, or issuer, its value remains the same.
However:
- 1 USD stablecoin is not equal to 1 USD in an Indonesian bank account
- 1 USD stablecoin is not equal to 1 USD in Indonesian deposit and withdrawal channels
- 1 USD stablecoin is not equal to the "correct" amount of IDRT (Indonesian Rupiah stablecoin)
- 1 USD stablecoin is absolutely not equal to the "correct" amount of Indonesian Rupiah in a local bank account
This is because:
- Stablecoin issuers in different deposit and withdrawal channels have different compliance and custody risk characteristics, which blockchain technology does not compensate for
- The probability of stablecoins getting stuck, failing information requests, or being lost varies when passing through different channels, and the chain structure cannot mitigate this transmission friction
- Exchanging cryptocurrencies for local fiat currency is often expensive, and the on-chain ecosystem has not provided a coordinated solution
- On-chain forex trading volume is low, quotes are frequently faulty, spreads are huge, and the entire on-chain ecosystem has not made any efforts to address this issue
If bank channels are not "compatible", the minting and burning transactions with issuers can only be as slow as SWIFT. The current blockchain ecosystem has invested insufficiently in fiat infrastructure to solve this problem.
Since no on-chain ecosystem natively addresses these issues, issuers need to spend years obtaining licenses, opening bank accounts, establishing expensive market-making partnerships, listing on exchanges, and building deposit and withdrawal channels.
Just this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart and Amazon are exploring issuing their own stablecoins. They will soon discover why Circle needs 1,100 employees.
This refers to the cumbersome, repetitive, and redundant work that every new issuer must handle. Why can't this be solved at the ecosystem level, so that each issuer doesn't have to handle it themselves?
The reason is that these problems are mostly concentrated at the boundary between fiat and cryptocurrencies. Blockchain development teams have never been very interested in these boundary issues and typically lack the expertise to solve them.
Codex is a blockchain dedicated to solving these problems, obtaining licensing, opening bank accounts, accessing fiat exchange services, and applying cutting-edge blockchain research to achieve:
- T+0 wholesale forex
- Frictionless atomic export channels
- Risk-free fiat settlement
T+0 Wholesale Forex (Private Beta)
Codex Avenue is an on-chain trading platform for institutional clients, providing instant settlement and exchange services between various fiat currencies and stablecoins, executing transactions at wholesale prices.
- USD <> USD stablecoin exchange: instant completion, 1:1 or near 1:1 exchange rate, supporting large transactions
- USD <> non-USD stablecoin swaps, instant wholesale forex pricing
- Fiat <> stablecoin: achieving par or low-cost exchange in dozens of countries and regions
Atomic Withdrawal Channel (Q4 2025)
Current compliance reviews occur off-chain, lacking atomicity, leading to account freezes and inability to withdraw funds.
Codex enforces compliance checks during transaction execution, rather than after the fact. Transactions that fail the deposit and withdrawal channel compliance check will be rolled back. This means users' stablecoins will never be stranded in deposit and withdrawal channels due to compliance issues.
Risk-Free Fiat Settlement (Q4 2025)
In many emerging markets, withdrawal channels are unreliable, inefficient, or prone to fraud. The Codex platform uses a verification node set composed of participating channels and relies on native forfeiture rules to ensure verification nodes are held accountable.
This means users can ensure safe and fast off-chain transaction execution with unprecedented guarantees.
For this reason, Codex may become the future of stablecoins.
