ARK Invest executive questions the Stablecoin Alliance project OpenUSD: suggests it may repeat a "Diem-style collaboration failure"

Odaily reports that Lorenzo Valente, Digital Asset Research Director at ARK Invest, published an article questioning the stablecoin alliance project OpenUSD. He remains highly skeptical about whether these consortium-style stablecoin initiatives can achieve scale. Valente noted that such alliances have previously emerged—including Diem and Global Dollar—but ultimately failed to generate dominant network effects. Currently, the stablecoin market is still led by Tether and Circle, whose main advantages are strong network effects and instant liquidity. OpenUSD may face a “cold start” problem, as the joint governance structure severely slows down decision-making efficiency and decentralized governance easily falls into coordination failure, similar to DAO experiment governance issues: high collaboration costs, slow execution, and inefficient capital deployment.

Additionally, OpenUSD’s economic model also appears difficult to sustain long-term operations. If it relies on a low fee-sharing mechanism, it will not be able to cover infrastructure, incentives, and market expansion costs.

Lorenzo Valente concluded that OpenUSD is more like a “collection of letters of intent” rather than a unified product system with strong execution capabilities. He believes that, in the long run, the winner is more likely to be a single operational entity capable of rapid iteration and independent decision-making, rather than a joint governance structure requiring broad consensus.