Converge is a public, EVM-compatible Layer 1 announced by Securitize and Ethena Labs in March 2025, designed to host tokenized real-world assets and the sUSDe yield economy on a single, compliance-aware execution layer. Both USDe and USDtb are native gas tokens, and Converge ships with institutional KYC/AML hooks that blue-chip RWA issuers like BlackRock's BUIDL and Apollo's ACRED already use through Securitize.
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Converge is a settlement chain co-built by Securitize, the SEC-registered transfer agent behind BlackRock's BUIDL fund, and Ethena Labs, issuer of the USDe synthetic dollar. It targets one workload: tokenized treasuries, equities, and credit funds settling against onchain stablecoin yield, on an EVM L1 where USDe and USDtb pay gas instead of ETH.
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The chain was announced jointly on the Ethena blog and via Securitize press in March 2025. Securitize brings the regulated rails (transfer agency, broker-dealer, fund administration); Ethena brings the liquidity layer (USDe at $4.9B circulating and USDtb at $527.7M, per DeFiLlama as of September 2026). The pitch is narrow: an L1 where a tokenized BUIDL share and an sUSDe yield position can sit in the same wallet, settle in the same block, and clear KYC at the asset layer rather than the application layer.
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Converge is a joint project between Securitize and Ethena Labs, with backing from the existing investor bases of both companies. Securitize is the transfer agent for BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized treasury fund and is registered with the SEC as a broker-dealer and transfer agent. Ethena Labs issues USDe and the institutional-grade USDtb stablecoin.
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Securitize's role is the institutional anchor. The firm is the registered transfer agent for BlackRock's BUIDL fund, which crossed $1B in tokenized treasury AUM in March 2025 and sits at roughly $2.3B per DeFiLlama as of September 2026, and it administers tokenized funds for Apollo (ACRED), Hamilton Lane, and KKR. Ethena Labs is the issuer behind USDe, a synthetic dollar that uses delta-neutral hedging to hold its peg, and USDtb, a more conservative stablecoin backed primarily by BlackRock's BUIDL itself. Ethena's staked USDe (sUSDe) distributes the yield from those hedged positions to holders.
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The pairing is mechanical, not just narrative: Ethena buys BUIDL through Securitize for the USDtb reserve, and Securitize's regulated investor base needs onchain dollar yield to deploy capital into. Converge is the chain where those two flows meet. Since the March 2025 announcement, Securitize has added Hamilton Lane as a launch partner, extending the same tokenized private-markets footprint the two firms built together starting in 2022.
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Converge is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack with Celestia supplying data availability underneath it, according to a joint technical update Ethena and Securitize shared with CoinDesk. USDe and USDtb are native gas assets, validators settle blocks denominated in stablecoins rather than a volatile native token, and the execution layer ships with built-in identity and compliance primitives so that regulated assets like BUIDL or ACRED can move without bolt-on permissioning at the application layer.
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Four design choices distinguish it from a generic EVM L1:

EVM compatibility means Solidity contracts, MetaMask, and standard tooling work without rewrites, which keeps the integration cost low for the lending venues, DEXs, and structured-product issuers Converge needs to bootstrap. sUSDe, Ethena's staked USDe, is positioned as the default reference yield curve for lending markets, fixed-income products, and tokenized fund cash sweeps built on the chain.
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Converge is designed to run permissionless and permissioned applications side by side rather than as separate networks. Per the Converge tech roadmap, permissionless DeFi apps such as Aave and Pendle can deploy freely, while institutional issuers like Securitize run permissioned RWA environments on the same base layer, with whitelisting decided at the application or asset level rather than by the chain itself. Ethereal, Ethena's incubated perpetuals exchange, illustrates the model: it plans to run its own blockspace for matching and post proofs down to Converge, so a high-throughput trading venue can inherit Converge's settlement and compliance guarantees without being bottlenecked by base-layer block times.
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Converge differs from generic RWA chains by tying its identity, gas, and yield layers to a single regulated transfer agent (Securitize) and a single stablecoin issuer (Ethena). Most RWA chains rely on third-party issuers for compliance and bridge in dollars. Converge co-locates the issuer, the cash leg, and the compliance layer on one L1.
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The contrast is sharpest with Plasma, the Tether-aligned stablecoin L1 covered in our explainer on Plasma blockchain. Plasma optimizes for stablecoin payments at scale: zero-fee USDT transfers, Bitcoin-anchored security, consumer remittance and merchant settlement as the headline use case. Converge optimizes for institutional asset issuance and yield: KYC at the protocol level, BUIDL and ACRED as native instruments, sUSDe as the reference rate. Both are stablecoin-native L1s; they target different sides of the dollar economy.
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Compared to general-purpose execution layers like Monad or MegaETH, Converge is narrower by design. It is not a throughput contest, even with its own gigagas ambitions. It is a permissioned-asset settlement venue dressed in EVM clothing.
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USDe is Ethena's synthetic dollar, holding peg through delta-neutral hedging across staked ETH and perpetual futures. USDtb is Ethena's institutional stablecoin, backed primarily by BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized treasury fund. On Converge, both serve as native gas tokens, replacing ETH or a volatile L1 token for transaction fees.
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Per DeFiLlama as of September 2026, USDe circulating supply is $4.9B and USDtb is $527.7M. USDe has grown roughly 25% since the prior refresh window while USDtb has pulled back from its earlier $635M level, reflecting Ethena's broader mix shift toward USDe and sUSDe. The two stablecoins still serve different audiences: USDe for crypto-native users seeking yield through sUSDe, USDtb for institutions and treasury desks that want a stablecoin whose reserves sit in a registered tokenized money market fund. Using both as gas means Converge does not force a single risk profile on every transaction; an Apollo ACRED holder can pay gas in USDtb without ever touching a synthetic asset.
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For broader context on the yield mechanism, see our explainer on how sUSDe works.
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Converge was announced in March 2025 with a developer testnet planned for weeks later and mainnet originally targeted for Q2 2025 by Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo. That target has passed without a confirmed mainnet launch date as of September 2026, and neither company has published a firm replacement date; treat any single-week date claims as unverified.
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What has moved in that time is the partner roster, not the launch clock. Securitize and Ethena have added application and asset partners including Hamilton Lane and Maple, alongside earlier-announced builders Aave, Pendle, Morpho, and Ethena's own incubated perpetuals exchange Ethereal, per Converge's site. The cautious framing is deliberate: pre-launch L1s routinely slip, and the credible signal is not the date but the integration roster at testnet, which determines whether mainnet ships with real liquidity or with empty contracts. For canonical timing, refer back to the Ethena blog and Securitize press.
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Converge sits in a 2025-2026 wave of stablecoin-aligned L1s where the chain's economics are denominated in dollars rather than a volatile native token. Plasma anchors the payments end and has been live on mainnet since September 25, 2025. Converge anchors the institutional RWA end (USDe and USDtb gas, Securitize-issued assets, sUSDe yield) and remains pre-mainnet a year later. Both bypass the assumption that an L1 needs its own speculative token to function.
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The shared thesis: stablecoins are the dominant onchain asset, and a chain that treats them as first-class citizens (gas, settlement, yield) captures a workload that generic EVM L1s underserve. Where Converge bets uniquely is that the institutional side of that workload, tokenized treasuries and credit funds, needs compliance baked into the chain rather than bolted on. For the full survey, see our pillar on stablecoin L1 chains.
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Converge and Plasma are both stablecoin-native L1s announced in 2025, but they target opposite ends of the dollar economy and are at very different stages. Plasma is Tether-aligned, launched mainnet in September 2025, and optimizes for high-volume USDT payments with zero fees and Bitcoin-anchored security. Converge is Securitize and Ethena-aligned, still pre-mainnet, and optimizes for tokenized RWAs with USDe/USDtb gas and protocol-level KYC.
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The split is summarized below.

For a deeper look at Plasma's design, see what is Plasma blockchain. Plasma is now a proven, live network; Converge remains a thesis until its mainnet ships, so treat the comparison as a stage-of-life split rather than a benchmark.
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Converge gives tokenized treasury issuers a single venue where the asset, the cash leg, and the compliance layer share one execution environment. A BUIDL or ACRED token can settle against USDtb on Converge without crossing a third-party bridge or relying on application-level whitelists, which shortens the operational chain that institutional desks have to underwrite.
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BlackRock's BUIDL, the largest tokenized treasury fund, launched in March 2024 and surpassed $1B in assets under management in March 2025; per DeFiLlama it sits at roughly $2.3B as of September 2026. Growth in the category is constrained less by demand than by the operational friction of moving regulated assets across general-purpose chains. Converge's bet is that issuers will consolidate on a chain that handles compliance natively. Whether that bet pays out depends on how many issuers Securitize can route through Converge versus competing venues once mainnet actually ships. For the broader RWA context, see our explainer on tokenized treasuries.
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Eco Routes is a stablecoin-native intent layer that abstracts cross-chain transfers across 15+ chains, including the emerging stablecoin L1 set. As Converge moves from testnet toward mainnet, the routing question for applications is the same one Plasma raised before it launched: how to move USDe, USDtb, and tokenized assets in and out of the chain without forcing every user to learn a new bridge UX.
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Eco's role is to absorb that complexity at the orchestration layer, so an application building on Converge can quote a transfer in stablecoin terms without exposing the underlying route. The Converge mainnet integration timeline depends on launch readiness; for the current chain set, see Eco.
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Sources and methodology. Stablecoin and RWA fund supplies pulled from DeFiLlama in September 2026 (USDe $4.9B, USDtb $527.7M, BUIDL $2.3B). Project background verified against ethena.fi blog, securitize.io press, CoinDesk's April 2025 technical report, Converge's own tech specification and roadmap, and BlackRock press releases. Plasma mainnet date per Plasma's own launch announcement. Launch dates for Converge are pre-mainnet and subject to change; treat single-week date claims as unverified.
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