🔴Open USD (OUSD): Stablecoin alliance of 140 corporations - A worthy rival to Tether & Circle

This is the biggest event in the stablecoin industry since the collapse of Libra/Diem in 2019.
OUSD is not a stablecoin issued by a single company like USDT/USDC, but a shared infrastructure operated by the independent company Open Standard, with a board of directors held by the partners themselves, with no single company holding sole control.
The differences of $OUSD:
- Issuance/redemption fees = 0, with no volume limits
- Shares nearly all profits from collateral assets with partners (after deducting negligible management fees)
- Collective governance through a partner council
-> Close to an onchain DAO model, completely reversing the model of Tether/Circle which keep treasury bond yields for themselves.
The difference is not technology but the ownership model - a shared infrastructure operated by Open Standard, an independent company whose board of directors consists of the participating partners, with no single entity holding sole control.
The leader is Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge - a stablecoin payment infrastructure company that was acquired by Stripe for $1.1B in 2025.
Abrams currently serves as interim CEO of Open Standard. It's not surprising that the project has such a massive number of partners: Bridge was previously the backend infrastructure for many payment companies, so Abrams has pre-existing relationships and technical credibility with nearly the entire fintech and TradFi ecosystem.
OUSD's logic is more similar to the Visa/Mastercard card network than a crypto issuer: The token belongs to no one, yet everyone has an economic stake in its growth.
This model is not without risk, as it is not unprecedented - Paxos launched USDG in 2024 with a similar structure, but after 18 months it remains limited to about $3B in circulation and a much smaller number of partners.
Not to mention that having too many parties with governance rights makes it difficult to reach consensus in management. Circle's stock has fallen sharply; let's see if OUSD can flip USDC's position this season.