Arbitrum joins Paxos-led Global Dollar Network as USDG lands on Ethereum L2

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.