S&P Global Buys the Auditor Behind Most Stablecoins: Why Now, and Why Twice?
S&P Global agreed Thursday to purchase OpenZeppelin, whose open-source code sits beneath most of the world’s largest stablecoins. It is the scores big’s second crypto deal in three days.
Neither firm disclosed a value. The buy arms S&P a grip on the code that strikes tokenized cash, not simply the knowledge describing it.
The Code Running Beneath Most Stablecoins
OpenZeppelin has revealed free good contract constructing blocks since 2015. Smart contracts are packages that transfer cash on a blockchain with no financial institution in the center.
The agency says its code has carried greater than $37 trillion in worth. It has run over 900 safety opinions and discovered greater than 10,000 flaws.
“OpenZeppelin’s requirements, expertise, and experience already energy the infrastructure behind the world’s main stablecoins, tokenized funds, DeFi protocols, and onchain markets,” Chief government Demian Brener stated that in the firm’s statement.
He retains his job and will report back to S&P Global Ratings president Yann Le Pallec.
S&P Global Has Spent a Year Rating Crypto Products
The firm issued the first credit standing of a DeFi protocol, Sky, and the first stablecoin stability assessments. It additionally tokenized the S&P 500 with Centrifuge, then constructed a hybrid crypto-equity benchmark.
Each of these judged a product. Buying OpenZeppelin pushes the firm into judging the code beneath.
That shift carries historical past. S&P paid $1.375 billion in 2015 to settle Justice Department claims that it defrauded traders over its crisis-era mortgage ratings.
Two Deals in Three Days Buy Two Different Layers
On Monday, S&P led a $110 million funding spherical in Kaiko. The Paris agency sells pricing knowledge throughout greater than 150 exchanges and protocols. BNP Paribas, Nasdaq Ventures and Royal Bank of Canada joined the spherical.
Kaiko measures what tokenized property are value. OpenZeppelin checks whether or not the code holding them holds up.
Both bets meet the similar awkward reality. CoinGecko studied 245 incidents since January 2025. Protocols that had already cleared unbiased opinions accounted for 88% of all the pieces stolen. Those breaches price $3.63 billion by July 2026, which implies audited protocols still lose funds.
Investors have been cooler on the purchaser. SPGI closed at $406.76 on September 16, close to the flooring of a 52-week vary topping out at $552.25.
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