Ratings giant S&P Global acquires OpenZeppelin in tokenized finance risk push
Building on its recent market-data investment in Kaiko, S&P Global’s latest purchase targets the technological risks facing banks and asset managers onchain.
S&P Global (SPGI) said Thursday it has agreed to buy OpenZeppelin, a smart-contract security firm whose open-source code library is used across much of the stablecoin and tokenized-fund market. S&P said contracts built with the library have moved more than $37 trillion over time. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal gives S&P Global access to a part of onchain finance that conventional ratings do not cover: the code that issues, moves and manages stablecoins, tokenized funds and DeFi products. A project can have sound reserves or a strong credit profile but still fail because of a flaw in its smart contracts. S&P is betting banks and asset managers will need common ways to assess that technology risk before they use onchain products at scale.
The $37 trillion figure is a measure of value transferred through contracts using OpenZeppelin’s library over time, not assets the company manages or holds.
Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin provides onchain security assessments and secure development services, alongside an open-source smart contract library used by many of the largest stablecoins and tokenized funds. It has conducted more than 900 security engagements surfacing over 10,000 vulnerabilities before code reached production, S&P said. Co-founder and CEO Demian Brener will continue to lead the business as its own unit under the OpenZeppelin name, reporting to Le Pallec.