Open Standard announced Open USD (OUSD) on June 30, 2026, a dollar-backed stablecoin designed for global payments and settlement. The venture is backed by more than 140 companies including Visa, BlackRock, Stripe, Mastercard, and Coinbase, with a live launch set for later in 2026.
Key Takeaways
- Open Standard announced Open USD on June 30, 2026, backed by more than 140 companies across payments, financial services, technology, and crypto sectors.
- The stablecoin charges zero fees to mint or redeem at any scale, with most reserve earnings distributed to partner companies rather than retained by the issuer.
- Open USD is planned on 4 blockchain networks (Solana, Polygon, Aptos Labs, and Stellar) when it goes live later in 2026.
- Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, leads Open Standard as its founding CEO.
- Open Standard governs the stablecoin through a partner-led board with no single controlling company, unlike Circle’s USDC or Tether Ltd.’s USDT.
What Happened?
Open Standard publicly unveiled Open USD as “the first stablecoin designed as open infrastructure for global money movement.” Open USD will launch later this year, with all partners integrating once it goes live.
The announcement establishes a partner-led independent board with no single controlling company to oversee Open USD governance, alongside a revenue-sharing model that returns most reserve earnings to 140+ partners. That structure inverts the economics of USDC and Tether, where the issuing entity retains reserve float as its primary income.
More than 140 businesses joined as partners, spanning payment networks including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover; financial institutions including BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Standard Chartered, and Commonwealth Bank; technology companies including Google, Samsung, IBM, and Shopify; and crypto platforms including Coinbase, Solana, Ripple, and Aave.
Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, is Open Standard’s founding CEO. He offered this framing in the official announcement:
The partner breadth spans industries that rarely share the same financial infrastructure. Payment processors tracked like Visa and Mastercard join crypto exchanges ranked in crypto exchange market data like Coinbase, OKX, and Bybit inside one governance structure. That alignment has no clear precedent in global payments infrastructure.
Open Standard’s Partner-Led Board Replaces Single-Issuer Control
Open Standard is an independent company governing and operating Open USD, with a corporate governance structure that ensures decisions are made in the collective interest. A partner-led board runs the organization rather than a single controlling entity.
Introducing Open USD: a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it.https://t.co/jqgDRs6mKf
— Open Standard (@openstandard) June 30, 2026
This structure breaks from how the two dominant stablecoins operate. Circle issues USDC as its primary commercial product and retains strategic control over issuance, reserve management, and redemption terms; Tether Ltd. similarly controls every operational dimension of USDT. Open Standard operates collaboratively, with governance held by the independent entity representing the full partner set.
The consortium model applies a network-governance logic to stablecoin issuance at meaningful institutional scale: no single partner can unilaterally steer reserve policy or redemption mechanics, which removes one counterparty-risk objection enterprise treasury teams routinely raise against USDC and USDT.
The 140+ partner breadth also insulates Open USD from the concentration risk that follows any single-issuer stablecoin when its controlling company faces regulatory scrutiny. Decisions that would affect Open USD require collective agreement among a board drawn from across industries.
Reserve Earnings Flow to Partners, Not the Issuer
Open USD charges no fees to mint or redeem, even at scale. This eliminates a cost barrier that has slowed institutional stablecoin adoption for treasury and payments teams operating at high volume.
Revenue from reserve economics is shared with companies that grow adoption, with most revenue generated from reserves returned to participants, minus a small management fee retained by Open Standard. The model inverts the standard issuer-capture approach, in which the issuing company retains float income on dollar-backed assets as its primary revenue stream.
By routing most reserve earnings back to partners, Open Standard creates a direct financial incentive for the 140+ companies to integrate and grow Open USD supply. The more OUSD circulates, the more reserve earnings flow back to the ecosystem that builds adoption.
Open USD will launch on Solana, Polygon, Aptos Labs, and Stellar. The simultaneous four-chain debut contrasts with USDC’s and USDT’s progressive chain-by-chain expansion. Launching on four chains at once targets fragmented stablecoin liquidity pools from day one, compressing the adoption ramp across decentralized finance markets and payments infrastructure simultaneously.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
Open Standard’s launch announcement does something structurally distinct from prior stablecoin launches: it turns the issuer’s reserve revenue stream into a partner benefit and distributes governance across a 140-company board with no controlling bloc. That combination addresses two objections enterprises consistently raise against USDC and USDT adoption at treasury scale: counterparty dependence on a single issuer, and the economic asymmetry where the issuer captures all reserve float while partners absorb integration cost.
Abrams brings direct stablecoin infrastructure experience through Bridge, which Stripe owns, and his background building payment infrastructure may matter more than any single partnership as OUSD moves toward its launch. The coalition’s cohesion through any contested governance decision on the partner board will reveal whether Open Standard’s collective model holds under pressure or whether dominant partners begin to assert disproportionate influence over the network’s direction.
