The stablecoin market is fragmenting, and onchain capital allocator Spark is betting it can capitalize on the split.
Fintechs, exchanges and banking groups are increasingly launching their own dollar-linked tokens. Each issuer wants to keep users, reserves and transaction activity inside its own network as competition ramps up.
The stablecoin landscape “is about to fragment more and more,” Sam MacPherson, CEO of Phoenix Labs, said in an interview with CoinDesk.
PayPal has PYUSD, Circle has USDC, and Tether has USDT. Robinhood has joined the Global Dollar (USDG) consortium and is building its own chain, while OpenUSD (OUSD) is another large consortium that includes Stripe and Coinbase.
Beyond these giants, there are hundreds of other stablecoins, including Ethena’s USDe, World Liberty Financial’s USD1 and Sky’s USDS.
The result is liquidity scattered across an expanding number of tokens and networks.
Spark is betting those networks will still need to connect. Its aim is to be the layer that moves money between them.
Spark is an affiliated lending and liquidity unit of Sky, the DeFi ecosystem formerly known as MakerDAO and the issuer of the USDS stablecoin. It is developed by Phoenix Labs and supported through Sky’s governance and capital.