The announcement of the Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin by a consortium of 140 financial giants, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and BlackRock, sparked discussion about the historical roots of this technology. Former Ripple principal engineer Matt Hamilton noted that the structure of the new project effectively repeats the architectural solutions embedded in the $XRP Ledger (XRPL) back in 2012.
The comment was prompted by an ironic post on X about the emergence of yet another “universal standard,” which only increases the number of competing coins on the market.
The 2012 concept
According to Hamilton, the original idea of the $XRP Ledger creators was based on the prediction that, in the future, every bank would want to issue its own stablecoin. To ensure their interoperability, the developers integrated two core functions into the network at the dawn of the industry: the free issuance of custom tokens and a built-in decentralized exchange (DEX) with an automated order book.
Fifteen years ago, the traditional financial sector showed no interest in this model. However, current events show that major players eventually arrived at exactly this approach.
“The original concept behind the $XRP Ledger and the reason it allows anyone to issue stablecoins and has a built-in DEX was because they thought every bank would want to issue its own stablecoin. At the time, the banks didn’t. Seems $XRP Ledger was 15 years ahead of the trend.”
— Matt Hamilton, Former Ripple Principal Engineer
The launch of Open USD is technically structured so that any company in the consortium can issue its own stablecoin and fully retain the yield from its reserves. This leads to the emergence of dozens of new competing tokens from Visa, Stripe or Coinbase, which fully corresponds to the old prediction made by the XRPL developers.
Ripple joined this project as an integration partner, so the consortium’s new assets will be supported on the $XRP Ledger. This market evolution highlights how far ahead of its time early blockchain technology truly was.
As a result, the built-in exchange and token issuance functions embedded in the network back in 2012 are simply beginning to perform their original technical task: enabling the exchange of multiple independent bank-issued coins.
