A consortium of more than 140 financial and technology companies introduced Open USD on Tuesday, a dollar stablecoin whose reserve earnings and governance are designed to flow to the businesses that adopt it rather than to a single issuer.
The token, ticker OUSD, will be operated by Open Standard, an independent company whose board is composed of the stablecoin's partners. Backers named in the launch include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Coinbase, Ripple, Google and Shopify. Zach Abrams will serve as Open Standard's founding CEO.
Open USD's pitch to corporate adopters rests on three stated design principles: businesses can mint and redeem the token at no cost and with no volume caps; partners receive nearly all of the earnings generated on the token's reserves, after a management fee; and the asset is governed collectively rather than by one company.
That structure inverts the incumbent model, in which the issuer keeps the float income. "Nearly all reserve economics" are shared with companies that grow adoption, the project says.
Open Standard says OUSD's reserves will be maintained at major financial institutions in compliance with US regulatory requirements. The issuer has not itemized the reserve composition beyond that framing, and the specific custodians, attestation cadence and regulated entity behind issuance remain undisclosed ahead of launch.
