BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Mastercard Team Up to Launch Open Standard OUSD Stablecoin
BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Mastercard, and a dozen other financial firms are teaming up to launch the Open Standard OUSD stablecoin. The stablecoin notably creates a collaborative governance system in which partners share earnings from its reserves.
According to a release, these financial firms are partnering to launch the OUSD stablecoin, which will go live later this year. Open Standard, the entity behind the initiative, noted that businesses still face significant hurdles, including expensive fees to mint and redeem most stablecoins at larger volumes. Furthermore, companies are not always able to benefit from the revenues earned on the underlying reserves, and developers have little recourse if third-party issuers’ roadmaps do not meet their needs.
In line with this, Open Standard highlighted three key design principles of OUSD. First, businesses will be able to mint and redeem the stablecoin at no cost and with no artificial limits on volume. Second, partners such as BlackRock, Coinbase, and Mastercard will receive all earnings from the stablecoin’s reserves, except for a small management fee to cover operational costs. These partners will also govern collaboratively with the Open Standard board, making decisions for their collective interest.
This marks the latest initiative these firms have collaborated on to advance stablecoin payments. Earlier this month, Ripple and Coinbase backed Mastercard’s AI agent payment system, which will utilize stablecoins.
BlackRock’s Global Head of Market Development, Samara Cohen, remarked that stablecoins can play an important role in the evolution of digital markets when supported by trusted infrastructure and practical utility. “Open USD is a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value and participate in internet-native digital rails,” Cohen added.
Coinbase’s Chief Business Officer, Shan Aggarwal, stated that stablecoins are the most important thing happening in payments right now. He added that the more great infrastructure the industry builds together, the faster they can close the gap between what payments are today and what they should be.
The stablecoin is expected to launch on layer-1 networks such as Solana and Tempo once it goes live. Solana has confirmed that the stablecoin will be issued natively on the network from day one, highlighting its decentralized governance mechanism and zero fees for minting and redemption.