Svmuu News: Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Asset Research at ARK Invest, published an article questioning the OpenUSD stablecoin consortium project. He expressed strong skepticism about whether such consortium-based stablecoin initiatives can scale. He noted that similar consortia have emerged multiple times in the past—including Diem and Global Dollar—but ultimately failed to generate dominant network effects.The current stablecoin market remains dominated by Tether and Circle, whose core advantages lie in strong network effects and instant liquidity. OpenUSD, however, may face a “cold start” problem, as its joint governance structure will significantly slow down decision-making efficiency. Under decentralized governance, it is prone to coordination failures, similar to the governance dilemmas seen in DAO experiments:high coordination costs, slow execution, and difficulties in efficiently deploying capital.
Furthermore, OpenUSD’s economic model appears unlikely to sustain long-term operations; if it relies on a low-fee revenue-sharing mechanism, it will be unable to cover infrastructure, incentive, and market expansion costs.
Lorenzo Valente concluded that OpenUSD resembles more a “collection of letters of intent” than a unified product ecosystem with strong execution capabilities. He believes that, in the long run, a single operational entity capable of rapid iteration and independent decision-making is more likely to prevail than a joint governance structure requiring multi-party consensus.