S&P Global agrees to acquire OpenZeppelin to assess onchain code risk
S&P Global agrees to buy OpenZeppelin
S&P Global (SPGI) said on Thursday that it has agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, a security firm that builds and checks the code behind many stablecoins and tokenized funds. Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to hold a steady value. Tokenized funds are investment funds issued as digital tokens on a blockchain, which is a shared record of transactions.
The price and other terms of the deal were not disclosed. S&P said contracts built with OpenZeppelin's open-source library have moved more than $37 trillion over time.
Key details of the agreement
- S&P Global announced the agreement on Thursday and did not disclose the terms.
- S&P says contracts using OpenZeppelin's open-source library have moved over $37 trillion. That figure measures value transferred through those contracts over time. It is not money the company manages or holds.
- OpenZeppelin will keep its name and run as a separate unit led by co-founder and chief executive Demian Brener, reporting to Le Pallec.
- S&P said the transaction is still subject to closing conditions.
What OpenZeppelin does
OpenZeppelin was founded in 2015. It provides onchain security assessments and secure development services, along with an open-source library of smart contracts. A smart contract is code that runs on a blockchain and can automatically issue, move or manage digital assets.
S&P said the library is used by many of the largest stablecoins and tokenized funds. The ratings firm also said OpenZeppelin has carried out more than 900 security engagements and found over 10,000 vulnerabilities before the code reached production.
What S&P Global said about the purchase
S&P said the deal gives it access to a part of onchain finance that ordinary ratings do not cover: the code that issues, moves and manages stablecoins, tokenized funds and DeFi products. DeFi, or decentralized finance, is a set of crypto services that run on blockchains without a central operator.
The firm said: "The transaction complements S&P Global's risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in digital asset markets, enhancing its ability to create the next generation of onchain security assessments, benchmarks, and deliver essential intelligence as capital markets transition onchain."
Confirmed facts and open questions
Confirmed: S&P Global said on Thursday that it has agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, that terms were not disclosed and that the deal is subject to closing conditions.
Still unclear: the supplied source gives no purchase price, no closing date and no other financial details.
Why code risk matters for tokenized finance
Ratings normally look at an issuer's creditworthiness and reserves. The source notes that a project can have sound reserves or a strong credit profile and still fail because of a flaw in its smart contracts. S&P is betting that banks and asset managers will need common ways to assess that technology risk before they use onchain products at scale. The purchase extends S&P's work from rating an entity to rating the code that entity runs on.
S&P's wider push into digital assets
S&P has been building digital-asset coverage for more than a year. It has published stablecoin stability assessments and issued the first credit rating of a DeFi protocol, Sky.
On Monday, the roughly $120 billion company led an investment that extended crypto data firm Kaiko's funding round to $110 million. BNP Paribas, Nasdaq Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and Royal Bank of Canada joined the round. Earlier in September, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko launched a co-branded digital asset index suite.
What happens after the deal closes
Once the closing conditions are met, OpenZeppelin will operate as a separate unit under its own name, with co-founder and chief executive Demian Brener continuing to lead the business and reporting to Le Pallec.
