Open USD takes on Tether, Circle with a different stablecoin model that's 'building money'

Open Standard publicly launched its dollar stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD), on Sept. 30, 2026, and made it available on Ethereum, Solana, Coinbase’s Base and Stripe-backed Tempo. The issuer positions OUSD for use cases spanning banking, cross-border payments, card settlement, institutional trading and lending, and frames its approach as focusing on distribution and day-to-day utility rather than reserve-fund construction.

Five companies — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — are the initial founding partners and investors; each received an equal initial equity stake and together pledged more than $1 billion to seed OUSD liquidity. Open Standard’s CEO Zach Abrams said management, not a broad committee of partners, runs the company; a smaller founding group will hold ownership and governance roles while a larger network of partners is aligned through usage-based rewards.

Open Standard has expanded its partner network from an initial roster of roughly 140 firms to more than 200, adding organizations such as UBS, Japan’s SBI Holdings and fintech Jeeves. Abrams said he expects the founding group to grow to about 10–12 companies and that Open Standard will establish a board composed of founders.

A core commercial difference Open Standard highlights is how it shares economics: rather than centralizing reserve income, the company plans to distribute the “overwhelming majority” of its cap table back to founders and network partners over the next 4–5 years based on measurable contributions to OUSD supply and transaction activity. Partners that meet undisclosed minimum thresholds can earn equity tied to both supply generation and movement of the token, the company said. Abrams framed the strategy as rewarding companies that help the token circulate rather than simply hold it.

The launch puts OUSD into a stablecoin market worth more than $300 billion that remains dominated by Tether’s USDT (about $143 billion circulating) and Circle’s USDC (roughly $74 billion). Abrams, who previously co-founded stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge (acquired by Stripe in 2024 for $1.1 billion), described Open Standard’s intent as building a widely useful digital dollar by aligning ownership with distribution and usage.