In the late 1990s, Korea’s PC communication services operated on a simple premise: The network itself was the service. Platforms such as Chollian, NowNuri and Hitel each created their own enclosed digital worlds, where users read news, joined chat rooms and formed online communities.
Yet the market did not ultimately reward the largest proprietary network. It shifted toward open standards. With the adoption of TCP/IP, HTTP and web browsers, anyone could connect using the same protocol, and anyone could build services on the same foundation. Competition moved from closed intranets to an open internet ecosystem.
The transformation unfolding in today’s stablecoin market is fundamentally similar. On the surface, the competition appears to revolve around which coin is larger or which issuer commands greater trust. But the deeper question is this: Where will the rails that move money ultimately converge?
Over time, stablecoins are likely to converge on standards built on global public blockchains.
Stablecoins issued on permissioned, private ledger networks may initially appear easier to control and govern. However, without interoperability across networks, scale and liquidity remain constrained. Money that functions only within a closed system begins to resemble a loyalty point rather than a global currency. What is not connected does not scale.
Public blockchains, by contrast, operate on shared rules maintained by distributed participants who collectively validate transactions on a single ledger. On such infrastructure, stablecoins function not as features of a particular application but as shared rails for payment, settlement and remittance. Just as HTTP became the universal rail of web services, stablecoins can operate as “money on the internet,” callable through APIs and composable with other services.
This structural distinction becomes even more consequential in the era of AI-driven payments. Autonomous AI agents require transactions to possess three core properties: Atomicity, composability and finality. Transactions must settle in a single, indivisible step; they must integrate seamlessly with other logic and services; and they must achieve irreversible confirmation without delay. Fragmented or multilayered network structures make these conditions difficult to satisfy. A single consensus layer offers clearer technical alignment with such requirements.
There are concerns that regulation may constrain public blockchain-based systems. Yet as standards surrounding reserves, redemption rights, disclosure and audit continue to mature, systems with transparent transaction records and built-in auditability may prove more resilient. The decisive factor is not whether a system is public or private, but whether redemption trust can be standardized through governance and operational design in a way that enables broad connectivity.
This perspective also reshapes the strategic outlook for a Korean won-based stablecoin. If its ambition is limited to replacing domestic payment rails, its growth potential will inevitably narrow. But if it is architected to support 24-hour business-to-business payments, cross-border settlement and global platform or content distribution payments — areas where current infrastructure remains slow and costly — it can integrate naturally into global financial networks. Global opportunity emerges only when the system is designed with a global premise.
The lesson of the PC communication era remains clear: Markets move not toward higher walls, but toward wider standards.
The next chapter of stablecoins will be determined not by which coin prevails, but by which rail they ultimately stand upon.
Helena Oh
Helena Oh (Eun Jung Oh) is the CEO of TokenSquare. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
