Last night I watched a news report that the state of Wyoming in the United States is selecting a public chain for the issuance of its upcoming stablecoin WYST. They conducted a public scoring, and ultimately 11 chains made the candidate list. Aptos and Solana tied for first place with 32 points, followed closely by Sei with 30 points, while Ethereum and several Layer 2s only scored 26 points or lower. This may differ significantly from the usual perception of the activity levels of public chain ecosystems and coin prices. How was this score determined? I was very curious, so I studied it together with GPT.

1/ First, I would like to commend the U.S. state government for their build in public approach. The Wyoming Stablecoin Committee behind the stablecoin WYST was established in March 2023 under the state’s Stable Token Act. This committee has a public Notion document that includes project introduction, meeting calendar and records, scoring criteria results and memos, Q&A, and contact information. It also lists its own YouTube channel, X account, Warpcast account, and Github account, demonstrating more seriousness and transparency than many current projects that lack effort.

Those who are interested can go directly to watch:
https://stabletoken.notion.site/

In Q4 of 2024, the committee initially selected 28 public chains, first screening out 14 based on four yes/no questions regarding permissionless access, supply transparency, on-chain analysis, and the ability to freeze. Next, scoring was conducted using 9 indicators (3 points each), including network stability, active users, TVL, stablecoin market cap, TPS, transaction fees, transaction finality time, block generation time, and whether registered in Wyoming. Finally, 5 additional advantages were considered, each worth 2 points (privacy, interoperability, smart contracts/programmability, use cases, partners) and 6 additional risks, each deducting 2 points (illegal behavior of entities, illegal behavior of teams, history of security vulnerabilities, poor network availability, lack of bug bounties, lack of code maintenance).

The final recommendation includes 5 Layer 1 main chains: Solana (32 points), Avalanche (26 points), Ethereum (26 points), Stellar (24 points), Sui (26 points) and 4 eligible Layer 2 chains: Arbitrum (26 points), Base (25 points), Optimism (19 points), Polygon (26 points) into the “candidate blockchain.”

3/Aptos and SEI were actually newly included in the evaluation in Q1 of this year. In this quarter, the committee updated the evaluation criteria, adding a new criterion under the true-false standards: “Whether there is vendor support,” which means “The blockchain must have the support of committee partner vendors for development, auditing, and infrastructure deployment, which can be undertaken by the foundation with approval.”

Updated a statement: “The chain must be fully indexed and supported by a chain analysis platform that cooperates with the committee (such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs).”

Two new items have been added to the additional advantages scoring section, which are:

• Emerging Market Trends: Does it carry emerging track projects such as AI, DePIN, virtual reality, and gaming assets?
• Foundation Support: Can the foundation support one or all of the following: technology development, WYST liquidity, market promotion?

In this scoring, Aptos and SEI received 32 points and 30 points respectively, and were thus added to the candidate chains.

4/ So how did this score difference arise? I have created a comparison chart of key differences focusing on core indicators. Please note that since the new scoring round did not reassess the 9 public chains that were previously selected, some of the data here is from the end of 2024 and not the latest.

It can be seen that Ethereum’s TVL is leading by a wide margin; however, in terms of transactions per second (TPS), transaction finality duration, transaction fees, and block generation time, this decentralized chain still suffers many disadvantages. Here, it can also be seen that the diversion caused by Layer 2 leads to the active user count on the Ethereum mainnet only being on the same level as SEI, significantly lagging behind Aptos and Solana.

But how did Aptos manage to score as high as Solana? I found that, on one hand, Aptos is indeed very balanced, with strong compliance, fast speed, low cost, and a relatively stable network. On the other hand, it is also because the second round of scoring added two additional scoring points, while Solana did not re-participate in this round of scoring. If we remove these two items, the actual highest score should still be Solana.

5/What is worth noting for Ethereum supporters is that while Ethereum has always touted itself as the best choice for carrying real assets on-chain, when it comes to technical selection at the government level, factors like permissionless networks present a threshold—once crossed, it’s sufficient. Network stability is only one of the core metrics; a lack of technical barriers and insufficient network availability are risk-decreasing factors. Solana has faced outages and has incurred a point deduction, but the overall impact is minimal; there is no rating for the degree of decentralization. State governments are more concerned with whether assets can be frozen and whether there is a physical presence in Wyoming. The majority of the core metrics focus on performance, cost, and scale.

Of course, the issuance of this state-level stablecoin has indicated from the very beginning that it will adhere to the principles of “multi-chain support and technology neutrality.” In the future, the rules will continue to be updated, feedback will be collected, and chains that were not selected are encouraged to continue submitting applications for participation in the selection process. Therefore, both the public chains that have entered the candidate list and those that have not yet made the list theoretically have a chance.

6/ In addition to the choice of public chain, this state-level stablecoin project in Wyoming is also noteworthy. As the first state in the U.S. to plan the issuance of a stablecoin, WYST originally intended to launch before July 4, but during the regular meeting at the end of May, this timeline has been postponed to the third quarter of 2025, with the new proposed date being August 20. Subsequent work also involves gathering public opinions on reserve management rules and final approval, developing a dedicated general ledger/accounting chart for the committee, establishing trust accounts and liquidity fund accounts with third-party custodians, and engaging with licensed service providers, including centralized exchanges, payment platforms, digital wallets, and market makers, for the purchase and resale of WYST, among others.

Ultimately, the reserves behind the stablecoin will be managed by Franklin Templeton, with Chainalysis responsible for on-chain analysis, and integration completed in collaboration with LayerZero and Fireblocks, establishing the decentralized verification network and the official website. The WYST contract will be deployed to the mainnet before August 20, followed by a public statement at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium for the official launch.

In addition to Wyoming, Nebraska has passed its “Financial Innovation Act,” authorizing an entity named Telcoin to issue a state-backed stablecoin, temporarily referred to as eUSD. Tinian Island, an overseas territory under U.S. federal jurisdiction in the Northern Mariana Islands, attempted to issue a dollar stablecoin named Marianas US Dollar (MUSD), which was vetoed by the governor in April this year, but the Senate overturned the governor’s veto in May.

The scene of various states in the United States and major companies gearing up to issue their own stablecoins easily reminds one of the Free Banking Era from 1837 to 1866. During that time, states, cities, private banks, railroads, construction companies, stores, restaurants, churches, and individuals issued approximately 8,000 different currencies by 1860, which were diverse and lacked a unified standard. The illustration in this article shows a 1-dollar private currency issued by the Delaware Bridge Company of New Jersey from 1836 to 1841.

7/ Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the RMB stablecoin, and some large companies are also eager to try it out. After the question of whether to have it or not, the next question might be which chain to run on. Should a dedicated chain be launched, or should it use the alliance chains of large companies like Ant Chain and JD Chain, or connect to commonly used international public chains, or utilize some domestic public chains like Hashkey Chain and Conflux, etc.? This issue poses a new challenge for governments and enterprises in China, the U.S., and other countries around the world. Wyoming’s scoring system and public disclosure system may not be perfect, but they do set an example for later adopters. In the future, we should expect to see more interesting governance developments.

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