With the worst kept secret and news finally out that Circle & Stripe will be building their own L1 blockchains, I wanted to provide some thoughts on why our strategy has been focused on being the platform that enables L1 blockchain launches. After the Robinhood announcement, CT did what it does - all the podcasters and naval gazers quickly re-pivoted back to “Every institution will launch an L2” & “Insitutions chose Ethereum because Tom Lee.” This was always nonsense because Robinhood considered many architectures, not all were L2s. The reality is and has been for a while that there will be millions of blockchains and there will be a mix of L2s and L1s. It’s also true that many L2s will eventually graduate into becoming L1s. If you are an institution with what may seem like unlimited resources, the thought of tying yourself and your infrastructure choice to the incumbents seems very risky! What if Ethereum, Arbitrum or Avalanche botches an upgrade and their business is interrupted? For many, this is a show stopper. Remember, there are still so many banks that use on-prem vs cloud… In addition, and I know people don’t want to hear this but, building an L1 does provide the ability to launch a token. The opportunity set of launching a token for an L1 that gets widely adopted is massive. Hyperliquid is a $42B FDV for one use case. How many other levers can a Stripe or Circle pull for that kind of marketcap? This is and has always been a key weakness for L2s and do not try and shill me your committee based nonsense. There is a reason Avalanche has built a network that allows for builders and enterprises to launch their own L1 blockchains, there is a market for it! That much is clear as well with FIFA, Maplestory & Gunzilla choosing to build on @avax. While Avalanche was not selected for these two (although it was at the top of the list for one of them), it validates the thesis that there will be many L1 blockchains and Avalanche can power that. It is not uncommon in the beginning of a new market for new entrants to want to build and own the whole stack, but history shows us that this is simply a detour, rather than a lasting trend. Seeing Stripe, Circle and Hyperliquid build their own L1 blockchains is great validation for the thesis that there will be millions of blockchains and Avalanche can power many of them.