ARK Invest Executive Questions Stablecoin Consortium Project OpenUSD: Potential Repeat of "Diem-Style Collaborative Failure"

Odaily Planet Daily News: Lorenzo Valente, ARK Invest's Director of Digital Asset Research, has questioned the stablecoin consortium project OpenUSD, expressing high skepticism about whether such consortium-style stablecoin initiatives can achieve scale. He believes that similar alliances have emerged multiple times before, including Diem and Global Dollar, but ultimately failed to form dominant network effects. Currently, the 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 severely slow down decision-making efficiency, making it prone to coordination failures under decentralized governance—resembling the governance dilemmas of DAO experiments: high collaboration costs, slow execution, and difficulty deploying capital efficiently.

Furthermore, OpenUSD's economic model appears unsustainable for long-term operations. If it relies on a low-fee split mechanism, it will be unable to cover the costs of infrastructure, incentives, and market expansion.

Lorenzo Valente concluded that OpenUSD resembles more of a "collection of letters of intent" than a unified product system with strong execution capabilities. He argued that in the long run, the more likely winners are single operators capable of rapid iteration and independent decision-making, rather than joint governance structures requiring multi-party consensus.