ZetaPeakThe “overwhelming majority” of Open Standard’s equity will be distributed over time to partners based on how much they help grow the stablecoin, CEO Zach Abrams said.
Open USD takes on Tether, Circle with a different stablecoin model that's 'building money'
The “overwhelming majority” of Open Standard’s equity will be distributed over time to partners based on how much they help grow the stablecoin, CEO Zach Abrams said.
Open USD, the stablecoin project backed by Mastercard, Visa and Stripe, went live on Wednesday on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo as an Open Standard targets payments, banking, settlement and institutional trading in a stablecoin market still dominated by USDT and USDC. Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa are Open Standard’s first five founding partners and investors, each getting an equal initial equity stake in the company. CEO Zach Abrams said the “overwhelming majority” of Open Standard’s equity will eventually be distributed to founders and other partners based on how much they help grow OUSD supply and transaction activity. Open Standard’s broader partner network has grown from more than 140 to over 200 companies, with UBS, Japan’s SBI Holdings and fintech Jeeves among the latest additions.
Open Standard, a new stablecoin issuer backed by Coinbase COIN$186.78, Mastercard (MA), Stripe and Visa (V), has brought its dollar stablecoin to market with a model designed to spread more of the economics and ownership across the companies that distribute and use it, rather than concentrating them with a single issuer.
Open USD (OUSD), after being initially unveiled in June, went live on Wednesday on Ethereum ETH$2,681.73, Solana (SOL), Coinbase’s Base and Stripe-backed Tempo blockchains, Open Standard CEO Zach Abrams told CoinDesk.
Abrams previously co-founded and led stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, which Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2024.
"We want to be the most useful stablecoin, the same way the U.S. dollar is useful," Abrams said. "Every other stablecoin is building a fund. We're building money."
Open USD is entering a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion and still dominated by two players: Tether's USDT, with about $143 billion in circulation, and Circle's USDC, with roughly $74 billion.
As banks, payment firms and fintechs crowd into the sector, competition is increasingly extending beyond simply issuing another digital dollar to distribution, liquidity and the platforms where customers actually use them.
That's where Abrams sees an opening. Open USD, he said, is designed for banking, cross-border payments, card settlement, institutional trading and lending, with an economic model built to reward the companies that drive supply and activity.
"When are stablecoins successful? It's when they recede into the background and just become a core part of your mom's bank account," Abrams said.
From 140 partners to five founders
Open Standard first emerged in June with more than 140 partners across payments, banking, crypto and technology, including BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered.
The initial announcement rattled competitor Circle CRCL$82.88 as the market worried that major USDC partners, including Coinbase, Visa and Mastercard, were lining up behind a competing digital dollar.
Some analysts, however, questioned what those partnerships meant in practice and whether a consortium-like structure involving so many companies — some of them competitors — could make decisions effectively.
Abrams rejects that consortium label.
Open Standard has corporate investors, he said, but its management runs the company rather than making decisions through a committee of hundreds of participants. A much smaller group of founding partners has an ownership and governance role, while the broader network is aligned through rewards tied to their contributions to OUSD.
Coinbase COIN$186.78, Mastercard (MA), Shopify (SHOP), Stripe and Visa (V) have invested as the first five founding partners, each receiving an equal initial equity stake. Together, they have committed more than $1 billion to establish OUSD liquidity over the coming months.
"Each of these folks [is] going to lean in and hold OUSD on their balance sheet, or hold OUSD onchain, or help market-make, or, in whatever use case makes the most sense for them," Abrams said.
The size of each firm's investment and equity stake was not disclosed.
The five companies are currently Open Standard's only investors, Abrams said, though he expects the founding group to eventually expand to roughly 10 to 12 companies. Open Standard also plans to establish a board of directors composed of founders.
Meanwhile, the partner network that aims to integrate OUSD has grown to more than 200 companies, Abrams added, with Japan's SBI Holdings, Swiss bank UBS and fintech Jeeves among the latest additions.
Equity for usage
Open Standard is also taking a different approach to how stablecoin economics are divided.
Stablecoin issuers earn interest from the cash and securities backing their tokens. Tether retains much of that income, while Circle shares a portion of USDC reserve revenue with distribution partners such as Coinbase.
Open Standard wants to make that relationship central to its model.
Founding partners won't receive a special share of revenue, Abrams said. Instead, they will earn rewards based on the amount of OUSD supply they generate, under the same framework as other partners.
Abrams said much of Open Standard's equity is also intended to be distributed over the next 4-5 years to founders and network partners based on their contributions to OUSD's growth.
"The overwhelming majority of our cap table is going to be distributed back to founders and non-founders based on how they help grow the network," Abrams said.
Stablecoin supply won't be the only measure. Partners that meet a minimum threshold can earn equity based on a combination of OUSD supply and transaction activity, giving them an incentive to move the token rather than simply hold it. The firm did not disclose the specific threshold that partners must meet to benefit.
That model comes as more financial institutions experiment with jointly backed stablecoins. For example, Qivalis is backed by 37 European banks developing a euro stablecoin, while 21 financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and UBS, plan to form a company issuing stablecoins for payments and digital asset transactions.
For Abrams, the opportunity is much larger than taking market share from USDT or USDC. He pointed to card settlement, foreign exchange and cross-border payments as areas where stablecoins could move money faster and more frequently than traditional banking rails.
Open USD will also eliminate minting and burning fees, which could be a meaningful savings for companies moving large amounts of money in and out of stablecoins, Dan Romero, chief business officer at Tempo, said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Romero said he sees a path to roughly $1 billion of OUSD on Tempo within the next few months, rising to more than $10 billion during 2027 and potentially exceeding $100 billion over the next several years. Open Standard plans to issue OUSD across multiple blockchains, but Tempo intends to compete to become its deepest liquidity pool, he said.
And U.S. dollars may only be the starting point.
Abrams said Open Standard is already seeing demand for stablecoins in other currencies. Notably, Bridge, the company he co-founded and led until recently, issued a euro-backed token for Revolut, underscoring demand from financial firms for currencies beyond the dollar.
“It's purely going to be driven by demands from the network, and I can tell you the network already demands other stablecoins,” he said.
Looking a decade out, Abrams said he wants Open USD rails to handle "hundreds of trillions of dollars a year" as stablecoins become part of the infrastructure behind global money movement.
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Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real World Yield in Productive Stablecoins
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Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Why it matters:
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
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