Stablecoin startup Boundary Labs is preparing to launch USBD, a “verifiable” institutional-grade stablecoin, following its most recent successful fundraising round.

 

The $2 million preseed funding round, which began last year, was led by Galaxy Ventures, with other investors, including First Block Capital and BlackWood, also participating in the round.

 

 

Following its recent fundraising success, the Boundary Labs team aims to create a stablecoin whose reserves are completely verifiable on-chain, including the stablecoin’s net asset value and protocol performance. This marks a sharp contrast with other stablecoins that depend on trust-based off-chain reporting and attestations.

 

“The Boundary protocol provides daily reporting on system state, including overcollateralization levels and real-time NAV calculations. USBD is engineered with explicit over-collateralization and delta neutral hedging to protect against market direction risk and volatility,” said Matthew Mezger, co-founder and CEO of Boundary Labs, about the USBD stablecoin.

 

Because trust is important for enhancing institutional adoption of USBD, especially for treasury management, collateral, and fiduciary use cases, Mezger said the team is building the entire USBD infrastructure with advanced smart contract code that moves the industry from monthly off-chain attestations to daily on-chain verification. By doing so, Boundary aims to transition from common trust-based stablecoin systems to a trustless one. 

 

“This shift provides the structural resilience and auditability required for safe, permissionless staking and institutional fiduciary use cases, effectively transforming stablecoins into robust financial infrastructure,” Mezger said.

 

Boundary Lab’s Yield-Generation Strategies

Unlike other yield-generating stablecoins, USBD will not be a yield-bearing stablecoin. Nevertheless, Boundary Labs will create sUSBD, a separate staked token that will enable institutional clients to earn yield from the protocol’s decentralized finance strategies.

 

The revenue generated by the protocol will be used to build treasury reserves, fund operations, and will also be distributed to sUSBD stakers through an on-chain allocation system. The reward system will be fully on-chain and available for users to track and audit.

 

To onboard early institutional clients, Boundary Labs is planning to launch a private placement campaign with the goal of reaching $100 million in total value locked (TVL). Both USBD and sUSBD will be launched on Ethereum.

 

 

Stablecoin issuer Circle has raised $222 million in a private presale of its Arc token, the native token of its institutional stablecoin-focused Layer 1 blockchain.

 

The presale was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $75 million. Investors, including BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Intercontinental Exchange, SBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, ARK Invest, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures, and crypto exchange Bullish, also participated in the funding round.

 

Speaking in an exclusive interview with CNBC, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company was building an operating system with multiple stakeholders and major companies that would run the infrastructure supporting the network and contribute to its governance.

 

Allaire also likened the Arc blockchain to a mobile operating system or cloud platform, saying the network was designed to allow major companies to build and operate infrastructure on the chain while participating in governance.

 

The Arc token has an initial total supply of 10 billion tokens. Circle has allocated 60% of the token supply to participants building, using, and contributing to the Arc blockchain. Circle itself will hold a 25% stake, enabling it to act as a validator for the network, while the remaining 15% has been allocated to a long-term reserve. The fundraising gives Arc a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billion. 

 

The launch of the Arc blockchain is aimed at expanding Circle’s business beyond USDC issuance, allowing the company to generate additional revenue from its stablecoin operations while owning and controlling the settlement and distribution infrastructure on which the USDC stablecoin operates. This would reduce Circle’s reliance on blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, as well as its dependence on Coinbase.

 

Circle Publishes Its First-Quarter Stablecoin Report

Alongside the announcement of its successful presale round, Circle also released its first quarter report for this year, which highlighted strong momentum and adoption of its stablecoin.

 

According to the report, total revenue and reserve income for its USDC stablecoin reached $694 million, marking a 20% year over year increase. USDC on-chain transaction volume also surged to $21.5 trillion in the last quarter, representing a 263% year over year increase.

 

 

Although net income from continuing operations fell 15%, USDC in circulation grew 28% year over year to $77.0 billion by the end of the quarter. The report also highlighted the introduction of Agent Stack, a platform designed by Circle that allows AI agents to conduct autonomous financial transactions using USDC.

 

 

OpenTrade, an institutional-grade stablecoin yield platform used by fintechs and exchanges, has raised $17 million to scale its stablecoin yield infrastructure.

 

The capital was raised in a strategic funding round led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with other investors including a16z Crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global also participating in the round, bringing the total funds raised to more than $30 million.

 

 

As part of its expansion efforts, the new funding will be used to scale OpenTrade’s permissioned and permissionless blockchain infrastructure, as well as support the growth of its Curation+ investment services. The funding will also be used to expand OpenTrade’s engineering, asset management, and trading teams, while building a dedicated customer support team to serve its growing client base.

 

OpenTrade was initially designed to provide plug-and-play infrastructure that enables financial institutions, including fintechs, exchanges, and neobanks, to offer multicurrency dollar and euro-denominated stablecoin yield products without having to build their own investment, custody, or infrastructure systems.

 

However, as the stablecoin yield market expanded, companies began seeking additional capabilities. Asset issuers started looking for distribution channels through decentralized markets. Non-custodial wallets and platforms also began seeking ways to enable users to earn yield without directly handling funds, all without having to build stablecoin yield infrastructure or internal investment teams from scratch.

 

To meet this demand, OpenTrade expanded its infrastructure to include its permission protocol layer and Curation+ services. Curation+ is a suite of sophisticated vault curation services designed to create and manage complex investment strategies, removing the operational burden associated with yield generation.

 

This infrastructure, together with OpenTrade’s broader platform, is currently used by companies including Littio, Midas Kripto, and Glim to deliver stablecoin yield products without having to build infrastructure or investment teams from the ground up.

 

“As we grew, it became clear that our infrastructure could also serve non-custodial platforms, treasuries, and asset issuers that all need the same thing: a safe, scalable way to connect stablecoins to diversified yield strategies,” said David Sutter, OpenTrade’s CEO.

 

“This raise allows us to scale that infrastructure and support a much broader range of use cases without compromising on risk management or quality of execution.”

 

OpenTrade recently surpassed $200 million in total value locked, or TVL, after processing more than $250 million in transaction volume last year. The team expects this volume to reach $1 billion by the end of the year and has already processed more than $300 million in transaction volume this year.

 

BitcoinOS has successfully secured a USD 10 million funding round, led by Greenfield Capital with participation from firms such as FalconX, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, and DNA Fund. The capital will accelerate BOS’s development of infrastructure aimed at transforming Bitcoin into a more programmable, institution-ready asset base through protocols such as “Grail Pro”.

BOS has already achieved a milestone by verifying the first zero-knowledge (ZK) proof on the Bitcoin mainnet, a technical breakthrough that opens the door for greater programmability and institutional deployment of Bitcoin.

---

What Is BOS Aiming to Build?

The core ambition of BOS is to make Bitcoin not only a store of value, but also a dynamic foundation for institutional finance — often called “BTCFi” (Bitcoin-based decentralized finance). The Grail Pro protocol they are building allows large custodians and institutions to deploy their Bitcoin holdings into yield-generating activities without giving up custody of their assets. Through a structure of distributed cosigners and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), institutions can mint a token (zkBTC) backed 1:1 by native Bitcoin.

In short, BOS is designed to enable institutions to:

• Earn yield on Bitcoin holdings while retaining custody.

• Bridge Bitcoin securely into other chains or financial rails without full trust in intermediaries.

• Unlock dormant Bitcoin (held by institutions or funds) and put it to productive use.

---

Why This Matters

Bitcoin has long dominated as a digital store of value, but its use in DeFi-style applications has lagged behind blockchains like Ethereum. The emergence of BTCFi infrastructure is now changing that. By unlocking institutional capital and making Bitcoin more functional as collateral or yield asset, BOS and similar protocols aim to open large new pools of liquidity.

With institutions holding billions of dollars in Bitcoin, even small activation of those holdings into yield, lending, or interoperable use cases can have outsized impact. The funding round thus signals confidence from sophisticated investors that Bitcoin’s role in the financial ecosystem is evolving.

---

Broader Context & Ecosystem Dynamics

• The rise of BTCFi has been noted by several industry observers: Bitcoin’s utility is extending from mere “HODL asset” status to one where it can actively generate returns and participate in financial networks.

• BOS isn’t operating in isolation. They are partnering and integrating with other networks and infrastructures (for example, layering with Bitcoin-compatible rollups or bridging technologies) to enhance interoperability and scalability.

• Security and custody remain paramount. BOS’s architecture emphasises institutional-grade safety, distributed cosigner models and zero-knowledge proofs to reduce counterparty risk — a key concern for institutional adoption.

---

What to Watch

Investors, users and institutions should keep an eye on several developments:

• How quickly Grail Pro is adopted by major custodians and institutions, and how large the total value locked (TVL) becomes.

• Whether institutions will actually migrate significant Bitcoin holdings into protocols built on BOS, thereby demonstrating the business case for BTCFi.

• How regulators respond to the institutionalisation of Bitcoin finance, particularly given that these models enable new financial uses for Bitcoin beyond its traditional store-value role.

• The competitive environment: as more providers work on institutional Bitcoin finance infrastructure, BOS’s ability to differentiate, secure partnerships, and scale will be critical.

---

Conclusion

BitcoinOS’s USD 10 million raise marks a significant milestone in the evolution of institutional Bitcoin finance. By developing infrastructure such as Grail Pro that preserves institutional standards of custody, security and compliance, BOS is helping push Bitcoin into a more functional role beyond being simply “digital gold.”

 

For institutions, this could mean better options to deploy Bitcoin in efficient ways, to earn yield, and to engage in cross-chain financial activity. For the broader ecosystem, it signals that Bitcoin’s narrative is shifting: from a passive reserve asset to an active component of financial infrastructure. If BOS and its peers succeed in unlocking institutional Bitcoin at scale, the implications for crypto-finance could be major.