Open USD Goes Live on Four Blockchains With Equity-Sharing Model

Open Standard has launched its dollar stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD), on Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase‘s Base and Stripe-backed Tempo, with Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa as its five founding partners and investors. The five have each received an equal initial equity stake and together committed more than one billion dollars to seed OUSD liquidity over the coming months. CEO Zach Abrams, who previously co-founded Bridge before Stripe acquired it for $1.1 billion in 2024, told CoinDesk the company intends to distribute the overwhelming majority of Open Standard’s equity to partners over time, weighted by how much each one drives OUSD supply and transaction activity.

The model is a deliberate structural departure from incumbents. USDT holds roughly $143 billion in circulation and USDC roughly $74 billion in a market worth more than $300 billion, and both concentrate economics with their issuers. Open Standard’s design routes yield and ownership toward distributors and users, targeting banking, cross-border payments, card settlement, institutional trading and lending. Abrams rejected the consortium label that analysts applied after the June announcement, clarifying that management governs the company rather than decisions flowing through a committee of hundreds.

The partner network has expanded from the 140-plus companies named in June to more than 200, with UBS, Japan’s SBI Holdings and fintech Jeews among the additions cited. The June announcement had unsettled Circle when several major USDC partners, including Coinbase, Visa and Mastercard, signalled alignment with a competing issuer. Whether the economic incentive structure successfully converts that network breadth into durable transaction volume is the operative question for the months ahead.