Open USD strips out stablecoin fees and hands equity to its users
Open Standard’s Open USD went live on Sept. 30 with a model that charges no minting or redemption fees and hands most reserve revenue, plus a shot at company equity, to the partners who push it.
The stablecoin, ticker OUSD, is live on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Stripe-backed Tempo, confirmed in the launch announcement. It arrives in a market worth more than $300 billion, where Tether’s USDT holds about $143 billion in circulation and Circle’s USDC roughly $74 billion. Both issuers charge for converting dollars in and out of their tokens, which is where much of their revenue comes from.
Open USD is doing the opposite. The majority of revenue generated by its reserves goes back to partners based on the OUSD supply and transaction activity they drive, the company said. Issued by Bridge, a Stripe company, with reserves held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY and monthly attestations planned, the token turns the usual issuer-takes-all economics into a rebate.
Equity is the second lever. CEO Zach Abrams said the overwhelming majority of Open Standard’s cap table will be distributed over the next four to five years to founders and partners based on how they help grow the network.
“The overwhelming majority of our cap table is going to be distributed back to founders and non-founders based on how they help grow the network,”
he said in an interview.
The five founding partners, Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, committed more than $1 billion to build OUSD liquidity, and each holds an equal initial equity stake. Abrams said they get no special revenue share, they earn rewards under the same usage framework as any other partner. He also pushed back on the consortium label, saying Open Standard has corporate investors but its management runs the company rather than a committee.
The gamble is that payments giants will choose a stablecoin that pays them for usage over one that charges them for access. Whether that tips market share away from USDT and USDC depends on supply figures that Open Standard has not yet released.
