Prioritizing Distribution: How Global Dollar Network scaled USDG to $3.1B in market cap by treating chain expansion as a business decision, not an engineering project

Snapshot

The problem: distribution dictates stablecoin growth

For issuers of stablecoins, the growth ceiling of their stablecoin is set by the blockchains it can reach. In theory, stablecoin issuers would like for their stablecoin to be available on as many blockchains as there is demand for their asset: more chains means more distribution, more utility, and more adoption.

But in reality, more chains brings more costs: both one-time engineering costs to make the underlying infrastructure of their asset compatible with each new chain, and also ongoing operational costs to monitor, configure and control the specific relationships between their assets and each chain. For every stablecoin issuer, the decision to make their asset available cross-chain is less of a business one and more of a technical and operational one.

For the subset of stablecoin issuers that issue regulated stablecoins, the question of whether to make a stablecoin available on multiple chains is even more complex. Issuers of regulated stablecoins are held to a higher standard of compliance, audit, and risk management than any other tokenized asset issuer in the world. Their decision about which chains to deploy their asset on, and which infrastructure they use to do so, is increasingly complex. In sharp contrast to the vast majority of crypto assets, every chain expansion for a regulated stablecoin issuer goes through a diligence process most token issuers in crypto never consider, let alone complete.

For the Global Dollar Network, this distribution challenge is even more complex. GDN is a global network of over 150 partners all working to accelerate and reward stablecoin adoption. Many of those partners have unique distribution strategies and communities, and GDN has to consider all those partners' needs when evaluating which chains to prioritize for the reach of its core asset, USDG.

The asset that powers Global Dollar Network is USDG. USDG is issued by Paxos Digital Singapore, which is a Major Payments Institution supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). USDG is also issued by Paxos Issuance Europe under the supervision of FIN-FSA and in compliance with MiCA. Each USDG token is always redeemable 1:1 for USD.

GDN wanted to grow adoption of USDG and make it available cross-chain. But given the high bar they had to clear between engineering, regulatory, security, risk, and future market demand requirements, their choice of infrastructure to make USDG compatible cross-chain was a decision they needed to get right.

The choice: LayerZero’s OFT standard as the institutional default

For the network to stay ahead of the growing needs of its members, they needed to decide how to make USDG compatible across blockchains while ensuring speed to market.

Looking ahead to the future of USDG and recognizing that its cross-chain utility needed to be as flexible as possible to meet changing demand, the Network decided to evaluate third-party options for cross-chain infrastructure, as opposed to building its own solution internally.

When Paxos began the vendor diligence process of cross-chain infrastructure providers on behalf of GDN, their regulatory position dictated the most significant requirements they needed to find in a vendor. Regulated issuers cannot outsource their security or compliance posture to a black box. They cannot rely on that third party to produce their asset’s audit trail, nor depend on a third party's multisig to pause their token in the event of a security breach. They need to own their asset’s configuration and have full control of it themselves.

In the end, the best path for accelerating USDG’s cross-chain interoperability was the LayerZero OFT Standard. The reasoning matches the pattern that has become standard across every major regulated stablecoin issuer that has done the same evaluation:

• Owner-controlled. Paxos owns the contracts. No third party can pause the token or change its configuration.
• Configurable security. Paxos selects the validator set. If a jurisdiction requires it, Paxos can (and does) run its own verifier. Paxos has customized its security configuration to ensure OFAC compliance.
• Built-in compliance controls. Allow/deny listing, pause, rate limits, and lock/unlock are part of the standard, not a bolt-on.
• SOC 2 Accreditation. LayerZero has achieved SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 accreditation for all of its infrastructure.
• Proof of scale. 87% of all cross-chain USD volume in 2026 moved on OFT. $300B lifetime. The infrastructure had already been tested by the world's most demanding issuers.

That last point is a critical signal for a stablecoin issuer's board. The diligence has been run, publicly, by peers. PayPal and Paxos picked it for PYUSD. Ondo picked it for its RWA suite, called Ondo Stocks. LayerZero’s 87% share is not marketing, it is the outcome of every serious issuer doing rigorous diligence and arriving at the same conclusion.

The unlock: Global Dollar Network focuses on distribution, not deployment

The strategic value of the OFT Standard for the Global Dollar Network is what it takes off their plate.

Before OFT Standard, expanding a regulated stablecoin to a new chain was a bespoke project. Custom contracts, custom liquidity bootstrapping, a new audit for every deployment. A new set of validator relationships to negotiate, a new compliance workflow to write from scratch. The issuer's operations, engineering, and legal teams paid the same tax on every incremental chain.

The OFT Standard makes chain expansion an incremental deployment, not a rebuild. The contracts are consistent. The security stack carries over. The audit trail is unified. The supply model uses burn-and-mint, so there is no wrapped-asset reconciliation and no fractured supply across venues. When USDG expanded to a new chain, Paxos was not writing a new integration, it was extending an integration it already ran. This was critical when Robinhood Chain launched in July of 2026: USDG passed $500M of value transferred to Robinhood Chain in the first 2 months of its existence.

The result: GDN has the freedom to focus resources primarily on distribution, not deployment. Global Dollar Network focuses on their own mission: accelerating and rewarding users of USDG while LayerZero supports chain deployment.

The results

USDG's market cap reached $3.1B. Lifetime volume transferred across chains has passed $3.9B as of September 2026. Global Dollar Network grew to more than 150 enterprise partners, and USDG expanded from a single-chain issuance to six chains through a combination of native issuance and bridging.

What this means for other issuers

Every regulated stablecoin issuer runs the same evaluation, unique to their specific jurisdiction. The variables are the same. The buyer's problem is the same: expand to more chains without expanding your risk surface, and without turning every new chain into a six-month engineering project.

LayerZero’s OFT standard is the answer most rigorous issuers building with regulations in mind arrive at because it decouples the two problems. Distribution is a business function. Deployment is infrastructure. LayerZero absorbs the second so issuers can focus on the first.

Global Dollar Network saw USDG reach $3.1B in market cap and $3.9B in cross-chain volume by treating chain expansion as a distribution decision, not an engineering decision. That is the pattern USDG makes concrete for every other issuer thinking about each next incremental chain.

Learn more about the OFT standard here: Resources