News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad has written an article rebutting the American Bankers Association's concerns about stablecoin rewards, stating that existing data does not support the claim that stablecoin platforms paying rewards will lead to deposit outflows from community banks and weaken local credit. Current law already permits such rewards, and Coinbase has been paying rewards to USDC users for over four years. Faryar Shirzad noted that from June 2019 to March 2026, community bank deposits grew by 26%, an increase of approximately $482 billion; research by Charles River Associates and the Council of Economic Advisers similarly found no significant relationship between stablecoins and bank deposits. The modification the American Bankers Association is requesting does not concern technical details in the CLARITY Act. The current text prohibits users from receiving returns solely for holding idle funds, but allows rewards for genuine activity; the amendment proposed by the American Bankers Association could expand restrictions to ordinary stablecoin use cases, and leave questions such as whether merchant rebates constitute bank interest to be decided by regulators and litigation. Faryar Shirzad calls for maintaining the existing compromise and passing the CLARITY Act, stating that the bill would grant banks new authorities in custody, staking, lending, payments, clearing, and market making.
According to PR Newswire, the Open Transaction Layer (OTL) officially launched on May 28 as an open industry initiative aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination standard for on-chain finance. OTL defines shared protocols among institutions, non-custodial wallets, and AI agents for identity verification, messaging, and transaction coordination—covering the entire transaction lifecycle, including discovery, compliance, and settlement. The founding alliance comprises over 25 members, including leading financial institutions, payment service providers, and blockchain foundations such as Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, MetaMask, Robinhood, Securitize, Wintermute, Solana Foundation, and Polygon. OTL’s technical specifications are built upon mature standards including W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and ISO 20022, and adopt a modular five-layer architecture covering Identity, Session, Transport, Messaging, and Application layers. The specifications have been published under an open-source license at otl.network, and the alliance is also open to additional institutional participation.
: Multiple institutions including Robinhood, MetaMask, and eToro, along with Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, Securitize, Wintermute, and others, jointly announced their participation in the "Open Transaction Layer (OTL)" initiative, aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination protocol layer for on-chain finance.OTL is positioned as an open protocol stack for coordinating identity verification, compliance validation, transaction messaging, and execution processes among wallets, institutions, and AI agents, addressing the integration fragmentation problem currently plaguing cross-institutional interactions in on-chain finance, where entities operate in silos.The current coalition members include payment companies, trading platforms, wallets, market makers, and custody and stablecoin infrastructure providers, including Robinhood, MetaMask, eToro, MoonPay, SoFi, Wintermute, among others, as well as foundations from multiple public chains such as TON, Solana, Stellar, and Polygon. (Financefeeds)
According to Cointelegraph, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Elon Musk requesting clarification on X platform’s planned payment feature, X Money—including its stablecoin and cryptocurrency integration strategy—and warning that it could pose risks to the financial system and U.S. national security. Warren specifically questioned whether X Money would issue its own stablecoin under exemptions provided by the GENIUS Act, and whether users would be adequately informed that their funds are not covered by FDIC deposit insurance. The letter also noted that X Money’s test preview indicates it may offer a 6% deposit interest rate and that it is partnering with Cross River Bank—a bank previously subject to FDIC enforcement actions.