HTX Ventures Latest Report | Open Infrastructure & Closed Financial Rails: Open USD, Revenue Redistribution, and Participant Governance

28 min ago • 40 min read

Abstract

Stablecoins have evolved from mere settlement tools within crypto trading into instruments for cross-border payments, corporate treasury management, and institutional back-office clearing. Public blockchains enable 24/7 USD token circulation, while banks, card networks, and payment firms increasingly integrate stablecoins into existing businesses. Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot reached an annualized run rate of approximately $7 billion by April 2026, expanding across nine blockchains. Meanwhile, initiatives like Swift, Canton Network, Fnality, and Project Agorá approach from the institutional market, exploring how tokenized deposits, central bank money, and on-chain assets can transact and settle within shared environments.

While technical infrastructure is opening up, economic and governance structures have lagged behind. Stablecoin issuers retain control over minting, redemption, and reserve yields; top-tier trading platforms dominate user acquisition and liquidity; and custody/data providers control critical interfaces. Banks, payment processors, and exchanges provide fiat on/off-ramps, customer bases, compliance frameworks, and market liquidity, yet rarely capture proportional revenue or influence platform rules regarding fees, access, and risk management.

On June 30, 2026, Open Standard unveiled Open USD (OUSD). Under the proposed framework, enterprises can mint and redeem OUSD free of charge and without volume limits. Open Standard charges a small management fee, with the remaining reserve yields earmarked for distribution to partners who adopt and promote OUSD. The published partner roster exceeds 140 entities, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, alongside multiple banks and payment institutions. Inclusion on this list, however, does not equate to finalized commercial agreements, system integration, or live business migration. Furthermore, select partners plan to participate in network governance via a board of directors. OUSD is slated for launch later in 2026, with zero active circulation, redemptions, or revenue-sharing records to date.

OUSD’s core challenge is not issuing yet another dollar-pegged token, but reshaping how value is distributed across the stablecoin ecosystem. It attempts to expand reserve yield distribution from issuers and a handful of dominant channels to a collaborative network while granting institutions that provide clients, liquidity, compliance, and payment use cases a voice in rule-making. Whether this model succeeds depends entirely on the credibility of reserves and redemptions, the verifiability of revenue-sharing mechanisms, the actual executive power of the board, and whether partners are willing to migrate real business to the network.

This report was released by HTX Ventures, the global investment arm of HTX. HTX Ventures continuously monitors structural developments in stablecoins, payment infrastructure, and institutional settlement networks, with a particular focus on how revenue distribution, customer ownership, and rule-setting authority evolve alongside technological shifts. Based on publicly disclosed partnership arrangements, regulatory developments, and operational settlement pilots, this report analyzes the institutional design of OUSD and the key areas that require further validation. It does not make any predictions regarding OUSD’s market performance following its launch.

I. Blockchain Finance: From Product Innovation to Infrastructure Competition

Early blockchain-based financial applications primarily focused on crypto asset trading. Exchanges, wallets, and on-chain protocols required relatively stable assets for pricing, collateralization, and liquidity management. USDT captured demand from global crypto trading and offshore U.S. dollar markets, while USDC expanded into broader payment and financial use cases through reserve transparency, U.S. regulatory compliance, and institutional partnerships.

As adoption expanded, stablecoins gradually began to take on the characteristics of financial infrastructure. They are no longer merely tokens held by traders, but digital dollar tools connecting public blockchains, trading platforms, payment providers, bank accounts, and corporate treasury systems. Traditional financial institutions have also shifted their approach to blockchain from technology experimentation to real-world deployment, focusing on whether funds can move around the clock, whether assets and cash can settle simultaneously, and how new systems can integrate with existing legal and risk management frameworks.

Visa has allowed certain issuers and acquirers to use stablecoins to fulfill settlement obligations. Consumer card payments, merchant acceptance, and transaction authorization continue to operate through the Visa network, while stablecoins are primarily used for back-end settlement. Swift is preparing to pilot cross-border payments based on shared ledger technology with 17 banks. Meanwhile, Project Agorá verified that tokenized commercial bank deposits and tokenized central bank reserves can complete multi-currency atomic settlement on a shared platform.

These cases illustrate that the entry of blockchain into traditional finance does not necessarily mean public networks replacing banks or card networks. More commonly, traditional institutions retain customer relationships, compliance responsibilities, and legal accountability, while moving certain aspects of fund transfers, transaction status, and conditional execution onto programmable infrastructure.

Market competition has thus expanded from individual products to the entire business chain, with the central question being who captures the revenue, controls customer relationships, and sets the rules of the network. Blockchain has lowered the technical barriers to asset issuance and global transfers, but it has not, by itself, changed how profits are captured or where control ultimately resides.

II. Closed Economic Structures atop Open Technology

Public blockchains typically allow developers to deploy smart contracts, users to hold and transfer assets directly, and different platforms to verify the same transaction state. This openness exists primarily at the technical layer, while the key economic rights in financial activities remain relatively concentrated.

Stablecoin Issuers Control Reserve Yields

When users deposit U.S. dollars to an issuer, the issuer mints an equivalent amount of stablecoins and invests the reserves in cash, short-term U.S. Treasury bills, or money market funds. Token holders typically do not receive the interest generated by these reserves. Instead, issuers use this income to cover custody, compliance, audit, and operating expenses, with the remainder becoming profit.

This business model can generate significant revenue when both the stablecoin supply and short-term interest rates rise. Tether reported that at the end of the first quarter of 2026, its liabilities related to issued tokens stood at approximately $183 billion, while its direct and indirect exposure to U.S. Treasuries was around $141 billion, and its net profit for the quarter was approximately $1.04 billion. In the second quarter of 2026, its net operating profit rose further to $1.5 billion.

Channels Bear Costs Without Automatically Capturing Revenue

Stablecoins rely on exchanges and wallets to provide user portals, payment companies to connect merchants and businesses, and banks to provide accounts, fiat on- and off-ramps, customer due diligence, and foreign exchange liquidity. Custodians are responsible for safeguarding the reserve assets, while the issuer or designated asset manager handles their allocation, and market makers maintain secondary-market pricing and liquidity. These institutions bear the costs of system integration, compliance, liquidity, and customer service, yet do not automatically receive a share of the income generated by the reserves. Only leading platforms with large user bases and control over major transaction access points are typically able to secure favorable revenue-sharing terms through bilateral commercial contracts.

Circle’s financial data demonstrates that channels are not merely peripheral to the stablecoin business. In the first quarter of 2026, the company’s reserve income was $653 million, while distribution, transaction, and other costs totaled $407 million. Circle stated that the increase in these costs was primarily driven by higher distribution payments. Issuers control the issuance and redemption of USDC, while platforms such as Coinbase control user access and trading entry points, allowing both sides to benefit from growing scale. Ordinary wallets, payment companies, and developers, even when they drive meaningful adoption, do not automatically gain access to the same revenue-sharing system.

Figure 1: Stablecoin Market Capitalization Structure (Source: CoinGecko, as of July 22, 2026)

USDT and USDC have established the dominant liquidity, redemption channels, and product integrations in the stablecoin market. Many payment companies have already integrated both into their wallets, risk management, accounting, and customer service systems. Replacing a stablecoin means reconfiguring an entire set of operational processes, and simply saving on minting and redemption fees is generally insufficient to cover the costs of migration.

Concentration in the stablecoin market is reflected not only in circulating supply, but also in control over yield and distribution channels. Issuers control reserve assets and redemption systems, while leading trading platforms control users and liquidity. Banks and payment institutions, meanwhile, connect on-chain assets to real-world accounts and payment networks. Although the tokens themselves circulate across multiple platforms, the underlying commercial relationships still depend largely on separate negotiations between issuers and major distribution channels.

III. How Value Distribution Drives Early Institutional Participation

The early development of blockchain finance was primarily driven by crypto enterprises. Since issuers and platforms bore the risks associated with product development, regulatory exploration, and market education, retaining a larger share of the revenue was reasonably justified. As the market matures, other participants in the value chain are beginning to reassess the value of their contributions. Banks provide fiat accounts and regulatory infrastructure; payment companies provide merchant and regional distribution channels; exchanges provide users and liquidity; and custodians manage reserves and assets. These entities are not merely customers of technology platforms; they are also key contributors to the value generated by the network.

If blockchain infrastructure establishes a clear competitive advantage and begins to threaten traditional institutions’ customers and core businesses, institutions may be forced to integrate with it even without an immediate opportunity to generate additional revenue. However, before such pressure fully materializes, technical efficiency alone is typically insufficient to incentivize institutions to voluntarily migrate their core operations. Revenue sharing and participation in governance can turn defensive positioning for the future into tangible commercial opportunities today, encouraging institutions to commit resources earlier.

Technical Efficiency Is Insufficient to Drive Early Migration

When enterprises adopt a new stablecoin or settlement network, they need to modify their financial, accounting, tax, risk management, and customer service processes. Even after the system development is complete, they must continue to manage liquidity, on-chain assets, and regulatory reports. If the new system only offers modest savings in transaction fees, institutions are generally more likely to continue testing and monitoring it rather than migrate their core operations. Adoption only shifts from a voluntary choice to a competitive necessity when competitors have already gained clear advantages in cost, speed, or customer acquisition.

When partners can earn continuous revenue based on the customers they serve, balances, payment volumes, liquidity, and compliance investments, connecting to the infrastructure can shift from being a cost burden to becoming a new business opportunity. The role of economic incentives is not to determine whether an institution ultimately adopts the technology, but to reduce the cost of waiting and encourage earlier participation.

New Revenue Buffers the Impact on Legacy Businesses

Stablecoins and shared ledgers may reduce banking fees, cross-border payment revenues, and certain foreign exchange spreads. They may also weaken the control that trading platforms, fund distributors, and traditional custodians have over closed account systems. In the short term, traditional financial institutions have little incentive to proactively promote a technology that could reduce their own revenues. Yet if their legacy businesses are likely to face competition sooner or later, institutions may be more willing to participate in new networks early in exchange for a share of new revenue, stronger customer relationships, and a greater role in shaping the rules.

While banks adopting stablecoin payments may reduce traditional cross-border payment revenue, they can capture fiat on- and off-ramps, foreign exchange, custody, and corporate treasury management income. When payment companies open up back-end settlement, processing fees might be compressed, but opportunities arise to share in stablecoin reserve yields or network service revenues. This is not simply replacing old revenue with new revenue; rather, it provides institutions with transition space before existing profits suffer greater disruption.

Mutual Interests Help Networks Reach Scale Earlier

Standalone systems cannot solve the challenge of network coverage. The value of payment and settlement systems derives from widespread use among a critical mass of transaction counterparties. While JPMorgan can offer near-real-time, programmable deposit accounts via Kinexys, competing banks are unlikely to entrust their core settlement operations to a direct competitor in the absence of overwhelming market pressure. If infrastructure is jointly accessed by multiple institutions with pre-determined rules for revenue sharing and decision-making authority, the barriers to cooperation among competing institutions may be significantly reduced.

Revenue sharing is not an absolute prerequisite for institutions to adopt blockchain, but rather an important mechanism for enabling the cold start of a consortium network before competitive pressure has fully materialized. It reassures participants that they will not merely shoulder construction and compliance costs, but will also share in the economic value and partial control as the network expands.

Figure 2: Stablecoin Profit Distribution Model

IV. The Emergence and Institutional Design of Open USD

Open USD is a direct response to the industry conflicts outlined above. According to the framework published by Open Standard, enterprises can mint and redeem OUSD free of charge and without volume caps. Open Standard retains a minor management fee from the reserve yields, with the remainder earmarked for distribution to partners who adopt and promote OUSD. Additionally, select members will secure seats on a partner board of directors to participate in network governance. It is worth noting that Open USD uses the same OUSD ticker symbol as Origin Dollar, launched by Origin Protocol in 2020, but the two are not the same product. Upon official launch, wallets, trading platforms, and users will need to distinguish between them based on the issuing entity and contract address.

From Fee-Based Access to Subsidized Distribution

Eliminating enterprise minting and redemption fees can lower the direct costs of moving funds for payment platforms, exchanges, and large enterprises. However, the elimination of fees is not the most important differentiator. Stablecoin smart contracts can be deployed relatively quickly; what is genuinely expensive is customer acquisition, liquidity, regional compliance, and fiat on- and off-ramps. OUSD attempts to use reserve yields to offset these long-term investments.

From Bilateral Negotiations to Network-Wide Revenue Sharing

Channel revenue-sharing for existing stablecoins primarily relies on bilateral negotiations between issuers and large platforms. Channels with the largest user bases and trading volumes wield stronger bargaining power, meaning mid-sized payment companies, regional banks, and vertical wallets may not secure equivalent terms even if they generate meaningful business. Open Standard aims to bring a broader range of participants into a unified revenue-sharing framework, allowing partners to share in the revenue generated based on their contributions to the network.

The Global Dollar Network, launched by Paxos, has already adopted a similar model. USDG distributes network revenue based on contributions such as minting, holding, and facilitating transactions, encouraging participating institutions to bring their own users and business into the network. Open USD has announced a broader range of partner types, bringing card networks, banks, payment companies, exchanges, and other infrastructure providers into the same arrangement.

From Issuer Governance to Participant Governance

Stablecoin issuers typically control reserve management, supported networks, technology upgrades, partnerships, and risk management. OUSD proposes that select partners have seats on the board, aiming to reduce the degree of control a single commercial entity has over the network.

“Openness” here does not mean that anyone can dictate financial rules, nor does it equate to full decentralization. A more probable governance structure would have the issuer responsible for asset credit and redemptions, the operating team handling day-to-day technology and business operations, partner institutions managing their own customers and compliance, the board of directors making decisions on certain major economic and operational matters, and an emergency committee handling security and liquidity events. OUSD seeks to extend the openness of stablecoin beyond the technical layer to revenue sharing and major rule-making.

V. OUSD’s Challenges to the Existing Stablecoin Architecture

OUSD challenges the existing system across three dimensions: revenue distribution, channel relationships, and governance rights.

First, it challenges the model where issuers retain the lion’s share of profits. USDT has demonstrated that stablecoins can generate substantial reserve income at scale. USDC has further demonstrated that issuers need to share a portion of that income with leading channels that control users and liquidity. OUSD attempts to turn channel revenue-sharing from a commercial arrangement negotiated with a handful of major platforms into a foundational mechanism of a collaborative network. If this model achieves sustained payment volume, other issuers may also face higher channel costs.

Second, it challenges the exclusive bargaining power of top-tier channels. In theory, a unified revenue-sharing mechanism allows more institutions driving genuine business volume to earn revenue, freeing them from the prerequisite of becoming mega-platforms with massive user bases. However, uniform rules do not automatically equate to greater fairness. If revenue is distributed primarily by balances, major banks and exchanges may still capture the bulk of the proceeds; if calculated primarily by transaction volume, members could manufacture activity through internal transfers or related transactions.

Finally, it challenges the model in which partner institutions bear the responsibilities without having a meaningful role in decision-making. Once stablecoins enter payment and financial settlement, decisions such as pausing a particular chain, changing redemption terms, or switching custodians can directly affect partners’ customers and liquidity. OUSD’s proposed board structure attempts to give institutions that bear business and regulatory responsibilities a corresponding voice in governance. Its practical significance depends on the scope of the board’s actual decision-making authority, rather than the number of institutions listed as partners.

VI. Public Blockchains, Shared Ledgers, and Consortium Governance

The practical impact of OUSD on payments and financial settlement will also depend on which networks it operates on and how it connects with the banking system. Public blockchains are well suited to connecting wallets, trading platforms, developers, and global users, whereas institutional shared ledgers place greater emphasis on identity, privacy, and access controls. Both types of networks rely on multiple parties to maintain a shared record of transaction states, but they differ in how access is structured.

Shared States Reduce Redundant Reconciliation

Traditional cross-border transactions leave separate records in the systems of paying banks, receiving banks, correspondent banks, and clearing houses. Once each party completes its bookkeeping, they must still reconcile discrepancies through messaging, files, and manual processes. A shared ledger enables participating institutions to coordinate operations based on a common transaction record, access relevant information according to their permissions, and use smart contracts to integrate payments, asset settlement, and certain conditional checks into a single workflow. While stablecoins have proven that on-chain assets can transfer 24/7, institutional shared ledgers are better suited for eliminating the redundant transmission and registration of back-office information.

Technology Does Not Replace Legal Liability

A unified transaction state does not mean that the legal rights underlying a token are clearly established. Who issues the asset, whether reserves are sufficient, and whether holders can recover their funds in the event of an issuer’s bankruptcy still depend on contractual terms, custody arrangements, and applicable laws. In the event of erroneous transactions, liquidity shortfalls, or court-ordered freezes, a ledger can preserve records and execute predefined conditions, but the resulting losses must ultimately be addressed by the relevant financial institutions. Technology reduces operational steps, but it does not change who bears the responsibility.

Institutional Markets Require Data Permissions

Public blockchain addresses do not inherently reveal corporate names, but large fund transfers, recurring counterparties, and repeated transaction patterns can expose institutional identities and business activities. Interbank payments, securities lending, and derivatives positions contain vast amounts of commercially sensitive information that cannot realistically be made fully public.

Canton Network is designed around these requirements. Different applications can define which institutions can participate and what data they can access, while the Global Synchronizer enables transactions across applications. Only the relevant parties can view and verify their respective parts of a transaction, without exposing their full positions to the entire network. The Global Synchronizer is operated by multiple independent institutions, which use a two-thirds Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism to confirm message ordering and governance changes. This illustrates that open infrastructure does not require all data to be publicly accessible. It can instead take the form of a network jointly operated by multiple regulated participants.

Network Performance Is Not the Sole Criterion for Institutional Chain Selection

Stablecoins can be deployed across multiple public blockchains, while banks can choose Canton, private DLTs, or their existing core systems. While deploying smart contracts is relatively straightforward, liquidity, customer connectivity, custody services, regulatory recognition, and operational experience require years to build. Even if a new chain boasts faster transaction speeds, it will struggle to handle large-scale fund flows without market makers and redemption channels. Networks backed by major banks, custodians, and payment institutions may not lead in technical performance, but they are far more likely to achieve sustainable settlement volumes.

Figure 3: Layered Structure of Open Financial Infrastructure

Can Consortium Governance Truly Alter Control Rights?

Multiple institutions participating in a project does not necessarily mean that control is collectively held by its members. Open Standard, Canton, Fnality, and Swift all involve multiple participants, but their governance structures differ. Canton emphasizes the joint operations of the Global Synchronizer by multiple institutions. Open Standard plans to establish a partner board, while Fnality and Swift retain clearly defined operating entities.

Determining whether a consortium has achieved genuine shared governance requires examining who has decision-making authority over asset and institutional onboarding, revenue and fee adjustments, data access, vendor selection, system upgrades, and emergency suspensions. When markets operate normally, these powers rarely attract much attention. However, when an asset loses its peg, a security incident occurs, or concentrated redemptions take place, decisions to pause transactions, replace vendors, or calculate losses can affect the safety of funds within a very short timeframe.

Source code transparency and a growing number of nodes cannot substitute for clearly defined decision-making procedures. Whether members’ powers and responsibilities are established in advance directly affects a consortium’s ability to respond quickly to emergencies. The more diverse the members’ backgrounds, the greater the coordination challenges. Card networks care about merchant networks, banks need to protect their deposit and foreign exchange businesses, exchanges prioritize on-chain liquidity, while technology companies focus on interfaces, clients, and data. Although all parties may jointly promote OUSD, they may still disagree over fee rates, customers, the integration of new chains, and revenue sharing.

Effective consortium governance requires delegating routine technical and operational matters to professional teams while reserving decisions on revenue allocation, vendor replacement, major upgrades, and emergency powers for the members collectively. The key is not whether every member participates in every decision, but whether the operational team’s authority and its limits are clearly defined. Open Standard has so far only published the general structure of its proposed partner board, without clarifying how much actual authority the board will have over budgets, custody, system upgrades, and emergency response.

VII. Validations Required for OUSD’s Success

A list of partners can provide market access, but it cannot substitute for actual liquidity or the migration of real business. For OUSD to become genuine financial infrastructure rather than merely a consortium announcement, it must demonstrate its viability across several key dimensions.

Establish Credible Reserve and Redemption Arrangements

The market must first establish who issues OUSD, what assets make up its reserves, who is responsible for custody and management, whether those assets are segregated from operating funds, and how frequently reserve information is disclosed. Fee-free redemption also requires clarity on whether ordinary holders can redeem OUSD directly for U.S. dollars or must rely on a limited number of first-tier channels. Revenue sharing can strengthen channel incentives, but it cannot substitute for the fundamental creditworthiness and redemption capacity required of a stablecoin.

Formulate Verifiable Revenue-Sharing Mechanisms

Allocating revenue purely based on balances is straightforward, but institutions with larger capital reserves—such as large banks and major exchanges—would disproportionately capture the majority of the available yield. Calculating shares strictly by trading volume also has inherent limitations, as frequent internal transfers do not necessarily reflect genuine payment activity. A more balanced mechanism would likely need to consider multiple factors simultaneously, including balance retention, actual payments, new customer acquisition, fiat on/off-ramps, liquidity contributions, and regional compliance investments.

A single transaction may pass through multiple participants, including a wallet, payment processor, exchange, and local bank. The consortium must clarify who is responsible for collecting and auditing the data, how to distinguish internal transfers and related-party transactions from genuine payment activity, and how to resolve disputes when members challenge the results. The revenue-sharing formula is not merely an economic issue; it is also fundamentally a matter of governance and data management.

Translate Partner Rosters into Live Business Operations

There is a substantial gap between an institution joining the consortium and actually migrating core business onto the network. Participation may amount to little more than brand support or technical testing, while deeper engagement could involve wallet integration, liquidity provision, access to fiat on/off-ramps, or even migration of back-end settlements. What ultimately determines the value of the network is the actual usage, such as stable balances, real-world payments, market-making depth, fiat coverage, and seamless redemptions, not the number of partners on the roster.

Strike a Balance Between Open Distribution and Liquidity Concentration

USDT and USDC have already established deep market liquidity, well-developed redemption channels, and broad product integration. While OUSD can leverage its partners to secure initial access points, it still relies on market makers, exchanges, and redemption providers to support price stability. Limiting deployment to a new chain would expose the project to constraints in user adoption and liquidity, while expanding across multiple chains would introduce additional challenges around supply reconciliation, bridge security, and regional regulatory compliance.

Establish Long-Term Revenue Streams Beyond Reserve Yields

Reserve income is heavily dependent on the scale of assets in circulation and short-term interest rates. As interest rates decline, the same level of reserves generates less interest income, reducing both partner incentives and Open Standard’s management fees. Reserve yields are best used as a cold-start incentive to help bootstrap the network. Over the long term, the network will need to generate revenue from payments and settlement, foreign exchange conversion, corporate treasury management, custody, and compliance services.

Figure 4: Transformation Boundaries of Open Infrastructure Across Existing Segments

VIII. Business Implementation and Infrastructure Division of Labor

Stablecoins and shared ledgers will not replace the existing financial system all at once; rather, they are more likely to first gain adoption in areas characterized by high operating costs, long processing times, or difficult inter-institutional coordination. As illustrated by the transformation boundaries in Figure 4, the technology is better suited to reducing information duplication, reconciliation costs, and the need for certain forms of pre-funded capital, while monetary credit, customer due diligence, final settlement, and dispute resolution still require clearly defined responsible entities.

Cross-Border Payments First Reduce Intermediary Messaging and Pre-Funded Capital

Traditional cross-border payments may pass through a sending bank, a correspondent bank, a foreign exchange liquidity provider, a receiving bank, and a local clearing system. While payment instructions can be delivered rapidly, funds may still remain tied up due to time-zone differences, intermediary bank reviews, and local liquidity constraints. To ensure sufficient funding for payments, institutions must also pre-fund accounts in multiple countries and currencies.

World Bank data for the third quarter of 2025 provides a useful benchmark. Sending $200 through a bank incurred an average cost of 14.99%, compared with 5.58% through post offices and 4.72% through money transfer operators.These costs also include foreign exchange, customer acquisition, licensing, and last-mile delivery, meaning that settlement is not the sole source of costs. Nevertheless, the significant cost differences across channels suggest substantial room for improvement in the use of intermediary accounts and manual processing.

Figure 5: Average Cost Differences Among Remittance Service Providers (Source: World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, Q3 2025)

While stablecoins can reduce some intermediary messaging and processing steps and shorten waiting times, the last-mile challenge remains. Whether a recipient can convert funds into local currency depends on access to local bank accounts, payment licenses, foreign exchange liquidity, and customer due diligence. In cases of fraud, court-ordered freezes, or erroneous transfers, on-chain funds are also significantly more difficult to recover than funds held in traditional accounts.

Card networks are more likely to adopt stablecoins initially for back-office settlement rather than replace the existing consumer payment experience. Consumers can continue to use their cards, while merchants continue to receive payments through existing acquiring networks; stablecoins are primarily used for settlement between card networks and financial institutions. Visa’s disclosure in April 2026 that its annualized stablecoin settlement run rate was approximately $7 billion suggests that this use case has moved beyond proof of concept and into limited-scale production.

Corporate Treasury Management Moves Toward Automation

Multinational corporations frequently face uneven cash distribution, which means idle cash may sit in one region while another faces short-term financing needs. Banking hours, account structures, and cross-border restrictions make it difficult for corporate groups to move and pool funds dynamically. Tokenized deposits and stablecoins can automate fund transfers based on balance thresholds while embedding payment, collateral, and FX conversion conditions directly into workflows.

Within a single bank, tokenized deposits can preserve a clear deposit relationship and existing customer records. When funds need to move across banks, platforms, or onto public blockchains, shared stablecoins such as OUSD may serve as intermediate assets. Going forward, corporate treasury management is more likely to use both types of tools in parallel, rather than having stablecoins completely replace bank deposits.

Clearing and Settlement Accelerate, But Ultimate Settlement Assets Remain

Following securities execution, transactions must still undergo trade confirmation, netting, funding preparation, and final settlement. Shared ledgers can bring securities and cash into the same programmable environment, enabling simultaneous delivery of the asset and payment through Delivery versus Payment. Similarly, Payment versus Payment in foreign exchange transactions can reduce the risk that one party makes a payment before the other party delivers the corresponding funds.

Project Agorá brings tokenized commercial bank deposits and tokenized central bank reserves onto a shared platform, where commercial banks continue to issue deposits while central bank reserves serve as the settlement asset for wholesale transactions. Fnality, meanwhile, uses funds held in central bank accounts on a 1:1 basis to back institutional settlement assets. OUSD is better suited to corporate payments and public networks, while tokenized central bank money and Fnality are better suited to high-value wholesale settlement. They are more likely to coexist at different stages of the same transaction rather than completely replace one another.

Instant settlement is not necessarily better simply because it is faster. Netting arrangements can conserve intraday liquidity, while atomic settlement cannot replace default funds, member risk management, or dispute resolution mechanisms. Operational cost savings must be evaluated alongside any additional funding requirements; focusing solely on settlement speed can easily overstate the benefits of the upgrade.

Custody and Compliance Services Will Not Disappear

Asset tokenization will not eliminate the need for custody services, but instead change what custodians are responsible for managing. Traditional custody covers securities accounts, corporate actions, and proof of ownership, while on-chain custody must also manage private keys, smart contract permissions, cross-chain risks, and address whitelists. Although shared ledgers make asset ownership and status easier to verify, they do not automatically eliminate account migration requirements or legal formalities. Custodians will increasingly generate revenue from security, insurance, compliance, and asset servicing.

Similarly, Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures can only be partially reused. Verifiable credentials can attest that a particular review has been completed, while the original documents remain under the control of the issuing institutions. Because regulatory requirements differ across jurisdictions, onboarding institutions must still remain responsible for conducting due diligence on their own customers. As a result, a globally universal “KYC passport” is unlikely to be realistic in the near term. More likely to be reusable are certain basic customer information and screening results, while high-risk activities will still require additional verification.

Diverse Infrastructure Will Long Coexist

The on-chain currencies and settlement networks currently available in the market do not solve the same problem. USDT and USDC rely on public blockchains to build deep and mature liquidity, while reserves, redemptions, and product roadmaps remain under the control of their issuers. USDG and the proposed OUSD retain the stablecoin model while sharing a portion of reserve income with partners. Bank-issued tokenized deposits preserve a clear deposit relationship, but their use is typically restricted to the issuing bank and authorized institutions. Canton, Fnality, Swift, and Project Agorá primarily target wholesale markets, with greater emphasis on privacy, atomic settlement, and regulatory compatibility.

Figure 6: Comparison of Four Types of Digital Financial Infrastructure

Retail payments and crypto trading require global accessibility, making public-chain stablecoins more advantageous in these use cases. When corporations manage cash within the banking system, they prioritize deposit rights, credit relationships, and accounting treatment, making tokenized deposits easier to integrate into existing workflows. Interbank and securities settlements often require central bank money for final delivery, making institutional shared ledgers more likely to receive regulatory support. Consortium stablecoins occupy a middle ground among these use cases, connecting payment platforms, banks, and public networks, but are unlikely to replace the other models.

Traditional networks and public chains are also increasingly adopting and integrating each other’s capabilities. Swift utilizes shared ledgers to connect bank-issued tokenized deposits, enabling banks to retain existing compliance and risk controls. Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement and tokenized asset services, while JPMorgan is connecting its deposit token capabilities with public networks. The competition facing OUSD stems not only from USDT and USDC, but also from traditional financial networks that are transforming the underlying financial infrastructure.

IX. Redistribution of Value Chain Revenue

If the revenue-sharing models of OUSD and USDG generate sustained payment volumes, other stablecoin issuers will likewise face higher channel costs. The room for issuers to retain the full reserve yield spread may narrow, requiring them to increase revenue sharing with partners, lower minting and redemption costs, or supplement income through payments, wallets, and enterprise services.

Exchanges, wallets, and payment companies, meanwhile, may gain greater bargaining power. Platforms that control direct access to users, liquidity, and payment use cases will no longer serve merely as stablecoin distribution tools; they may also become key participants in revenue-sharing and governance arrangements.

The impact on banks is two-sided. As enterprises convert a portion of their transactional balances into stablecoins, banks may lose some deposits, correspondent banking fees, and cross-border payment revenues. At the same time, stablecoins still require reserve custody, fiat on/off-ramps, foreign exchange liquidity, compliant accounts, and corporate treasury management. Large banks can turn their account and regulatory capabilities into network-based services, while small and medium-sized banks may leverage shared infrastructure to enter cross-border businesses that they previously lacked the capacity to build independently.

The direct impact on Visa and Mastercard remains relatively limited. A card network’s value lies not only in moving funds, but also in transaction authorization, fraud management, dispute resolution, and global merchant acceptance. Stablecoins are more likely to serve as a new back-end settlement tool, while card networks can help shape settlement rules and capture a share of related revenues by participating in the consortium.

Clearing, custody, KYC, and data services will also see a divergence. Fees based on proprietary records, redundant reconciliation, and duplicate reviews may decline, whereas services related to security and liability will expand. Smart contracts and cross-chain systems will require continuous audits, reserve and identity statuses will demand credible attestations, and institutions will still need key management, insurance, and regulatory data interfaces. Simply controlling a proprietary ledger will no longer be sufficient to sustain high profit margins; service providers capable of managing risk, interpreting data, and assuming liability will retain their bargaining power.

X. Risks, Scenarios, and Future Validation

The first test for OUSD following its launch is whether partners migrate meaningful real-world transaction volume. While existing payment systems may be inefficient, their legal, accounting, and dispute resolution arrangements have been in place for decades. If a new network merely shortens settlement times without offsetting migration and operational costs, institutions may remain in the pilot phase for an extended period.

The second risk stems from the distribution of power within the consortium. A minority of large banks, exchanges, and payment platforms may control the majority of balances and transactions, giving them leverage to demand larger shares of revenue and greater decision-making authority. If small and medium-sized members can only accept terms dictated by top-tier institutions, the difference between a consortium and a single-issuer model will gradually narrow. Conversely, if members are granted excessive veto power, system upgrades and security responses could face delays.

The third risk arises from multi-chain operations. When issues occur in bridging or messaging systems, determining which networks to pause, how to reconcile token supplies across chains, and who bears the losses can affect asset prices within a matter of minutes. If authorities and responsibilities are not clearly defined in advance, they can become operational obstacles during an incident.

The fourth risk comes from interest rates and regulatory constraints. Declining short-term interest rates will reduce member incentives and Open Standard’s management fees. Payment licenses, capital controls, sanctions, and data localization requirements across different markets will also constrain overseas expansion. While on-chain tokens can circulate globally, compliant accounts and local services must still be built out on a market-by-market basis.

Future Scenarios

Optimistic Scenario: Card networks and payment companies migrate a portion of their back-office settlement to OUSD, banks provide reliable fiat on/off-ramp channels across multiple regions, and market makers connect public chains with institutional networks. As circulating balances grow, reserve revenue continues to support channel incentives, while real transaction volumes strengthen the incentive for wallets and enterprise systems to integrate, enabling OUSD to evolve gradually from a stablecoin product into shared payment infrastructure with multiple stakeholders.

Neutral Scenario: OUSD gains traction in corporate treasury management, card network settlement, and selected cross-border payment use cases, yet fails to replace USDT, USDC, tokenized deposits, or institutional shared ledgers. It becomes a complementary option among various on-chain currencies and settlement tools, maintaining a meaningful scale without becoming a unified global settlement layer.

Weaker Scenario: Members remain unable to establish stable rules around revenue sharing, customer attribution, data usage, and emergency permissions over an extended period. Following launch, liquidity and real payment volumesremain limited, while falling interest rates weaken channel rewards. The project may not experience a clear-cut failure; instead, partners might simply gradually reduce their commitment, ultimately preventing the network from developing self-sustaining usage.

When evaluating OUSD, supply scale is merely a starting point. Whether circulating balances are concentrated among a few members, whether redemptions can be processed promptly, and whether secondary market spreads remain stable can all provide insight into asset quality and liquidity. Transaction volumes originating from remittances, merchant settlements, and corporate payments, alongside the regional coverage of fiat on/off-ramps, provide a clearer picture of actual business demand. The amount of real-world business volume migrated by partners, the enforceable execution of revenue-sharing rules, and how the board handles member divergences and system incidents serve to test the consortium’s governance and operational capabilities. As interest rates fluctuate, the network’s ability to generate revenue from payments, foreign exchange, custody, and enterprise services will ultimately determine the long-term sustainability of this model.

Figure 7: Key Validation Dimensions for Open USD

If balances remain heavily concentrated among a handful of members, it may merely reflect short-term capital parking rather than proof of genuine adoption. Furthermore, if the new system fails to reduce pre-funded capital, reconciliation friction, and duplicate reviews, merely transplanting legacy fragmentation onto the blockchain cannot be considered effective infrastructure modernization.

XI. Participant-Shared Infrastructure from the Perspective of Open USD

Open USD raises a broader question for the blockchain market: when a handful of platforms capture outsized revenues, customer access, and infrastructure rules, while banks, payment processors, exchanges, asset management institutions, and custodians provide the underlying assets, customer relationships, liquidity, and compliance capabilities, the value chain may ultimately face pressure to redistribute profits and control.

Such structural shifts are most likely to materialize in middle- and back-office infrastructure, including payments, settlement, liquidity, and institutional interoperability. These domains require participation from multiple institutions, making it exceedingly difficult for any single platform to independently provide comprehensive customer reach, regional licensing, fiat on/off-ramps, and counterparty networks. Institutions need to share a common infrastructure, yet they remain reluctant to cede core business operations, client data, and risk management authority to a direct competitor over the long term. Consequently, as businesses migrate on-chain, participating institutions will not only care about transaction speed and system costs, but also demand a share of network revenues and participate in decisions on access criteria, fee schedules, data permissions, and emergency controls.

Building fully standalone systems fails to resolve this dilemma. While a major bank can establish its own tokenized deposit and payment network, competing banks are unlikely to surrender their primary settlement operations to a direct competitor. Similarly, a standalone tech firm can offer a unified interface, yet struggle to independently assume account, compliance, and liquidity responsibilities across various global jurisdictions. Only when multiple institutions contribute the capabilities in which they have a comparative advantage and interconnect through common rules can a network achieve sufficiently broad coverage.

Under this framework, banks provide fiat accounts, customer due diligence, and ultimate redemption services; payment companies connect merchants and regional payment channels; exchanges and market makers furnish liquidity; custodians manage assets and transaction permissions; and technical teams oversee day-to-day operations. Parties do not need to jointly manage every technical detail, but they must establish upfront how revenues are allocated, which institutions are eligible for access, and who is responsible for major upgrades and risk incidents.

Open USD applies this logic to stablecoin issuance and distribution. Canton leverages multi-party operations and permissioned data for institutional asset interoperability; Fnality enables participating institutions to utilize settlement assets backed by central bank account funds; and Swift explores introducing tokenized deposits and shared ledgers across existing banking networks. Although their underlying assets, technologies, and governance models differ, they reflect a unified underlying demand: financial institutions seek the efficiency and market coverage of a shared network without ceding critical infrastructure control to a single commercial platform.

The competitive edge of such networks does not necessarily stem from superior performance on any single metric. The true differentiator is the ability to coordinate multiple regulated participants, and incentivize them to bring their clients, capital, and business activities onto the network. Consortium governance and revenue sharing are thus not simply ideological commitments to decentralization, but pragmatic commercial prerequisites for building cross-institutional networks.

Looking ahead, the most important question is not whether all financial activities will pivot to a consortium model, but which middle- and back-office functions have accumulated sufficiently large profit pools while relying on multiple institutions to create value collectively. If a single platform captures most of the revenue, while customers, liquidity, compliance, and regional coverage are provided by other institutions, participants will have an incentive to establish new revenue-sharing and coordination arrangements. Stablecoin issuance is merely the first area in which this tension has become apparent; similar shifts could gradually extend to fiat on/off-ramps, cross-border liquidity, institutional custody, and the distribution of tokenized assets.

While customer-facing financial services may continue to be dominated by new integrated platforms, back-office infrastructure that requires a broad network of counterparties and institutional collaboration is better positioned to evolve into shared networks among participants.

For trading platforms, this shift affects their position within the value chain. Exchanges provide user access, market liquidity, and compliance capabilities, making them important contributors to network value. Under existing structures, however, they may not receive revenue or participation in rule-setting proportionate to their contributions. HTX and HTX Ventures closely monitor the evolution of these infrastructure models, including differences in revenue-sharing mechanisms, access requirements, and governance structures across networks. Once established, these arrangements can shape the practical pathways for asset issuance, liquidity formation, and cross-institutional settlement over the long term.

XII. Conclusion

Public blockchains have established open, global, and programmable technological infrastructure, yet the financial industry’s profit pools, customer relationships, data, and rule-making power remain highly concentrated. Technological openness has not automatically translated into economic openness.

The emergence of Open USD signals that the stablecoin industry is entering a new phase of development. As digital dollars evolve from crypto trading instruments into payment and settlement infrastructure, banks, payment companies, exchanges, and custodians are reassessing the value they bring to the ecosystem. They are not merely distribution channels for issuers; they also provide access to customers, liquidity, compliance capabilities, and regional market coverage.

OUSD seeks to broaden access to reserve yields and distribute part of the decision-making authority across a network of partners. What it challenges is not one-to-one dollar pegging, but an industry structure in which issuers control the economics, major platforms negotiate on an individual basis, and partner institutions bear the externalized risks.

Whether this model can succeed depends on the credibility of its reserves and redemption mechanisms, the verifiability of revenue-sharing calculations, the governance structure’s ability to exercise real authority, and whether partners are willing to bring meaningful real-world business onto the network. Open governance may slow upgrades and risk response if it lacks operational efficiency, while revenue-sharing frameworks that fail to accurately recognize genuine contributions may be captured by a small number of dominant members.

Therefore, the most important task for Open USD is not to prove that the market needs another stablecoin, but to demonstrate that open infrastructure can create a more effective mechanism for aligning the interests of network participants than closed platforms. If successful, stablecoin competition will no longer be defined solely by issuance scale and on-chain liquidity, but will increasingly center on the allocation of network value, infrastructure revenue, customer relationships and data, operational decision-making authority, and liability in the event of incidents.

The next phase of financial infrastructure may not be fully decentralized. Instead, it is more likely to evolve from single-company control toward a model in which regulated participants jointly participate, share the benefits, and adopt tiered governance for critical matters.

About HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.

HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active FOF (Fund of Funds) funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.

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