“Large conglomerates of large companies coordinate poorly, have the wrong incentives, slow things down, and rarely create space for true lasting innovation,” he wrote.
Test for the consortium model
This skepticism is shared by Lorenzo Valente, director of digital asset research at ARK Invest, who noted that crypto has seen several consortium-backed stablecoin initiatives over the years, including Meta’s Diem project and the Paxos-led Global Dollar Network.
“Every year we get our consortium-style initiative around a stablecoin,” Valente wrote in an X post. “While the set of players here is obviously potent, I remain very skeptical that any of these initiatives can hit scale.”
He said Open Standards’ biggest challenge may be coordinating more than 140 participants with competing interests.
“A consortium of hundreds of rivals has no precedent for working,” he said. “The pace of decision-making across competitors will be glacial.”
Valente compared the model to decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, whose governance structures often struggled to make timely decisions.
“‘Owned by all’ almost always means accountable to no one,” he said. “I’ll bet on the two operators who can send unilaterally over a committee that has to ask hundreds of rivals for permission.”
He also questioned whether major banks, payment networks and technology companies would remain committed if the project faces regulatory pressure. Circle and Tether, he noted, have spent years building global regulatory infrastructure and licenses, while a consortium may find it harder to stay aligned if conditions become more challenging.
