Ratings giant S&P Global acquires OpenZeppelin in tokenized finance risk push

S&P Global (SPGI) said Thursday it has agreed to buy OpenZeppelin, a smart-contract security firm whose open-source code library is used across much of the stablecoin and tokenized-fund market. S&P said contracts built with the library have moved more than $37 trillion over time. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal gives S&P Global access to a part of onchain finance that conventional ratings do not cover: the code that issues, moves and manages stablecoins, tokenized funds and DeFi products. A project can have sound reserves or a strong credit profile but still fail because of a flaw in its smart contracts. S&P is betting banks and asset managers will need common ways to assess that technology risk before they use onchain products at scale.

The $37 trillion figure is a measure of value transferred through contracts using OpenZeppelin’s library over time, not assets the company manages or holds.

“The transaction complements S&P Global’s risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in digital asset markets, enhancing its ability to create the next generation of onchain security assessments, benchmarks, and deliver essential intelligence as capital markets transition onchain,” the firm said.

Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin provides onchain security assessments and secure development services, alongside an open-source smart contract library used by many of the largest stablecoins and tokenized funds. It has conducted more than 900 security engagements surfacing over 10,000 vulnerabilities before code reached production, S&P said. Co-founder and CEO Demian Brener will continue to lead the business as its own unit under the OpenZeppelin name, reporting to Le Pallec.

S&P has been building out digital-asset coverage for more than a year, publishing stablecoin stability assessments and issuing the first credit rating of a DeFi protocol, Sky. OpenZeppelin extends that work from rating the entity to rating the code it runs on.

The deal follows a run of digital-asset moves by the roughly $120 billion company. On Monday it led a strategic investment that extended crypto data firm Kaiko’s Series B to $110 million, joined by BNP Paribas, Nasdaq Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and Royal Bank of Canada. Earlier in September S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko launched a co-branded digital asset index suite, and in March the two tokenized the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index.

The transaction is subject to closing conditions and is not expected to have a material impact on S&P Global’s financial results.