Arbitrum joins Paxos-led stablecoin group Global Dollar to capture digital dollar growth

Arbitrum is joining the Global Dollar Network, the Paxos-led stablecoin consortium behind USDG, as the Ethereum layer-2 network looks to capture a slice of the economics from the stablecoins already circulating on its rails.

USDG has launched on Arbitrum on Tuesday with integrations spanning trading, lending and payments, including Fluid, Morpho, GMX, Maple, Li.Fi, Gauntlet, Steakhouse, LayerZero and Kraken. Uniswap and Fhenix are set to follow.

The stablecoin is issued by Paxos, backed one-for-one by dollar reserves and has more than $3 billion in circulation across networks. Global Dollar Network has more than 150 partners, including Robinhood, Kraken, Mastercard, and OKX. Its model distributes rewards generated by USDG reserves among partners that help drive adoption, rather than leaving those economics solely with the issuer.

That model gives Arbitrum a new way to make money from the stablecoin activity happening on its network. There is currently about $3.8 billion of stablecoins on the network, with Circle’s USDC accounting for roughly 60%, DefiLlama data shows. Arbitrum doesn’t get a share directly in the reserve income generated by those tokens.

“With USDG, Arbitrum and builders across the platform now have a stake in the growth upside,” said Brendan Ma, head of investment strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation.

A governance proposal published Tuesday asks ArbitrumDAO to make USDG growth a strategic priority, add 100 million ARB to its DRIP incentive program and use treasury assets to support USDG liquidity.

The push highlights the trend of stablecoin consortiums becoming a bigger part of the battle over digital dollars. Open Standard is building around OpenUSD, with backing from major payments and commerce firms including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify. In Europe, Qivalis is backed by 37 banks. The idea is to spread issuance, distribution and economics across a broader network of partners rather than leave control with a single company.

Arbitrum itself has attracted fresh attention recently. Its technology underpins Robinhood Chain, the brokerage’s planned Ethereum-based network, with Robinhood agreeing to share a portion of revenue generated by user activity with the Arbitrum ecosystem.