USDG launched on November 1, 2024, issued by Paxos Digital Singapore Pte. Ltd. (Paxos), headquartered in Singapore. A few days later, on November 4–5, the Global Dollar Network (GDN) was formally introduced — a consortium whose founding members are Anchorage Digital, Bullish (owner of CoinDesk), Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei, Paxos, and Robinhood.
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USDG was designed to be “substantively compliant” with the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS) then-upcoming stablecoin framework; DBS Bank (Southeast Asia's largest bank by assets) serves as the primary banking partner for reserve management and custody.
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A distinguishing business model: USDG shares a portion of the interest income earned on reserves with GDN partners who help drive adoption (e.g. exchanges, wallets, payment providers) — explicitly positioned as a “more equitable” alternative to the Circle/Tether model, which keeps the full interest income for the issuer.
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Initially launched solely on Ethereum, later expanding to Solana and the Ink network.
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Summer 2025: expansion into the EU market, pursuing MiCA compliance, in direct competition with USDC (the first stablecoin to obtain a MiCA license).
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The network grew to 130+ partners by 2026, including Mastercard, DBS Bank, OKX, Gemini, KuCoin, Worldpay, Bitpanda, Archax, Wirex, and interoperability provider Mesh.