“Large groups of large companies coordinate poorly, have misaligned incentives, slow things down, and rarely create the space for true lasting innovation,” he wrote.
Test for the consortium model
That skepticism is shared by Lorenzo Valente, head of digital asset research at ARK Invest, who noted that cryptocurrencies have seen several consortium-backed stablecoin initiatives over the years, including Meta’s Diem project and the Paxos-led Global Dollar Network.
“Every year we have our consortium-style initiative around a stablecoin,” Valente wrote in an X post. “While the set of actors here is obviously powerful, I remain very skeptical that any of these initiatives can achieve scale.”
He said Open Standard’s biggest challenge may be coordinating more than 140 participants with competing interests.
“A consortium of hundreds of rivals is unprecedented to operate,” he said. “The pace of decision-making among competitors is going to be glacial.”
Valente compared the model to decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, whose governance structures often struggled to make timely decisions.
“‘Belonging to everyone’ almost always means being accountable to no one,” he said. “I would bet on the two operators that can make unilateral shipments, instead of a committee that has to ask permission from hundreds of rivals.”
He also questioned whether large banks, payment networks and technology companies would remain committed if the project encounters regulatory pressure. Circle and Tether, he noted, have spent years building global licensing and regulatory infrastructure, while a consortium could find it harder to stay aligned if conditions become more challenging.
