140-Company Stablecoin Consortium Unveils OUSD

A new stablecoin: On Tuesday, more than 140 businesses announced the formation of Open Standard, a consortium that plans to issue the Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin later this year. The group spans a wide range of tech and finance firms, including Stripe, Visa, Google, Coinbase, BlackRock, and Standard Chartered. It is headed by founding CEO Zach Abrams, who also remains CEO of Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure platform acquired by Stripe in 2024.

• Why it matters: Open Standard reflects a broader shift in how new entrants are moving into the stablecoin market. Instead of simply partnering with an existing issuer or launching their own stablecoin, more firms are now forming or joining consortia around shared issuance models. In Europe, Qivalis and Bancomat are among the most prominent recent examples. In the U.S., the Global Dollar Network has attracted more than 90 participants since launching in November 2024, while its USDG stablecoin has grown to around $3 billion in market cap. What sets Open Standard apart is the breadth and profile of the companies backing OUSD from day one.

How it works: Similar to the Global Dollar Network, the Open Standard presents its structure as an alternative to the stablecoin model used by dominant issuers such as Tether and Circle. It highlights three differences: free minting and redemption, shared reserve earnings, and more partner-led governance.

• Revenue sharing: Partners will receive the earnings generated by Open USD’s reserves, minus a small management fee to cover Open Standard’s operating costs. This is the clearest departure from the traditional single-issuer model, where the issuer captures most of the reserve income and may share economics only through bilateral distribution agreements.
• No mint and redeem fees: Participants will be able to mint and redeem Open USD at no cost and without volume limits. The aim is to make the stablecoin more viable for use cases where even small fees can become meaningful at high volumes.
• Governance: Open USD will be operated by Open Standard, an independent company with a board made up of Open USD partners. This would give all partners a formal role in decisions around the network’s development, economics, and roadmap, rather than leaving those decisions solely with a single issuer.

Early innings: For now, public information beyond the announcement remains limited, especially on governance questions such as board composition and voting rights, as well as the issuance stack behind OUSD. When Blockstories reached out for more detail on these points, Stripe declined to comment.

• Unclear commitments: The uncertainty also extends to the partner list itself. According to Korean media, some local companies only learned through domestic news reports that they had been listed as OUSD partners, with Samsung Electronics saying there had been no formal discussion and that it did not know what role it would play.

Stripe's new darling: Despite the early stage, Stripe already said Open USD will become the default for businesses using stablecoins on its platform, effectively replacing Circle's USDC as the current go-to stablecoin on Stripe.

Circle in the crosshairs: Even though OUSD is only expected to launch later this year, Circle’s stock already reacted sharply to Open Standard’s launch, falling roughly 17% on the day. The move also prompted Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire to publish a long statement defending USDC’s position, arguing that its lead in distribution, liquidity, and licensing is not easily replicated. So far, however, that has done little to ease concerns that Circle’s competitive position may be weaker than previously assumed.

Luca Prosperi is co-founder and CEO of M0, a stablecoin infrastructure platform that allows firms to issue their own stablecoins and powers, for example, mUSD, the stablecoin of leading wallet provider MetaMask.

What does Open Standard’s broad partner list signal to the stablecoin market?

First, I don't think that the size of Open Standard’s partner list should be read as a prerequisite for success. In fact, the broader the list, the weaker the individual commitment may be.

Anchorage Digital, for example, already operates a competing white-label stablecoin issuance platform. That makes exclusivity around OUSD unlikely, and I expect the same to be true for several other participants.

I would therefore read the broad partner list mainly as a signal of dissatisfaction with the current stablecoin market structure. Anyone sitting on large stablecoin floats, or using stablecoins to move in and out of fiat at scale, has a clear incentive to weaken Circle’s pricing power and benefit from a more competitive landscape.

Coinbase’s position is particularly interesting in that context. As one of the largest beneficiaries of USDC’s current dominance, it has a lot to lose from a dismantling of Circle’s market position. Its participation in the Open Standard may therefore be less about abandoning Circle, and more about creating leverage ahead of its distribution-agreement negotiations later this summer.

Christian Catalini is a Research Scientist and the founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab. Previously, he served as Head Economist at Meta Fintech and Chief Economist of the Diem Association, the organization behind Meta’s ultimately discontinued digital money initiative.

If Open Standard succeeds, what would it mean for players like Circle?

It would make the life of pure-play issuers extremely difficult. I argued two years ago that issuance is a commodity, and I'm surprised the market is only absorbing that reality now. GENIUS only reinforces this point: once regulated stablecoins are treated as equivalent, the issuer’s role becomes much harder to defend as a standalone business model.

And I see no obvious path for Circle to sustainably move beyond pure-play issuance. It is already trying to monetize more of the economic activity around USDC, including through its payment network. But the more Circle pushes in this direction, the more it risks competing with the very partners it needs for distribution, potentially cannibalizing its core business.

That said, the fate of players like Circle is far from settled, because it hinges on whether Open Standard actually succeeds. To get there, it needs clearly independent leadership, as anything resembling a “Stripe dollar” would not be neutral enough for the broader market. It also needs governance that can coordinate competitors without creating antitrust concerns, while balancing small and large participants: control by a few would undermine trust, but too much decentralization would make it hard to act.