According to @stonecoldpat0, the key question is whether Stripe and Circle are holding back potential L2 launches because they want stablecoin-denominated gas, but neither company has publicly announced an L2 or cited stablecoin gas as a blocker, per Stripe’s 2024 stablecoin payments announcement and Circle’s product documentation that focus on USDC, CCTP, and Programmable Wallets rather than an L2. On current major Ethereum L2s, gas is paid in ETH, per Optimism and Arbitrum documentation, reinforcing ETH’s role as the native L2 fee asset. Stablecoin-fee user experience is already possible via account abstraction and paymasters that let users pay fees in USDC while the protocol settles gas in ETH, per the ERC‑4337 specification, Circle Programmable Wallets gas abstraction docs, and zkSync Era documentation on paymasters. Some networks natively allow multi-currency gas, such as Celo which supports fees in cUSD, showing stablecoin gas is technically feasible without launching a new L2, per Celo documentation. Trading takeaway: until an official L2 plan is disclosed by either firm, ETH remains the dominant L2 gas asset while USDC utility expands through mainstream integrations like Stripe’s stablecoin payments, per Stripe’s announcement and L2 documentation.