Arbitrum joins Paxos-led stablecoin group Global Dollar to capture digital dollar growth

Arbitrum has become a participant in the Global Dollar Network, the consortium organized by Paxos that issues the dollar-backed stablecoin USDG. Paxos says USDG is backed one-for-one by dollar reserves and has surpassed $3 billion in circulation across blockchains. The token went live on Arbitrum on Tuesday with a set of integrations covering trading, lending and payments. Partners and protocols already integrated on Arbitrum include Morpho, GMX, Fluid, Maple, Li.Fi, Gauntlet, Steakhouse and LayerZero, while Kraken is providing on- and off-ramp support. Uniswap and Fhenix are noted as slated to follow. Global Dollar Network counts more than 150 partners overall, among them Robinhood, Kraken, Mastercard and OKX. Arbitrum hosts roughly $3.8 billion of stablecoins on its network, with Circle's USDC representing about 60% of that supply, according to DefiLlama. Unlike USDG’s partner model — which distributes rewards from USDG reserves among adoption-driving partners — Arbitrum’s current stablecoin mix does not generate a direct share of reserve income for the network. A governance proposal published Tuesday urges ArbitrumDAO to make USDG growth a strategic priority, add 100 million ARB to the DRIP incentive program and deploy treasury assets to bolster USDG liquidity on the chain. The move comes amid heightened activity by consortium-style stablecoin projects that aim to spread issuance and distribution economics across multiple firms and platforms. Competitors highlighted in the space include OpenUSD, backed by payments and commerce firms such as Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify, and Qivalis, supported by 37 European banks. The emergence of these alliances reflects a broader industry push to share the economic benefits of stablecoin reserves with distribution partners rather than concentrating them with a single issuer.