S&P Global Ratings is bringing its Stablecoin Stability Assessments to public blockchains through a new collaboration with Chainlink, a move that lets decentralized applications pull the firm’s stablecoin risk views straight into automated workflows.
The feed debuts on Base, with plans to expand, and initially covers 10 leading dollar-pegged tokens. The assessments are not credit ratings.
They are purpose-built gauges of a coin’s ability to hold its peg that can be consumed on chain.
S&P’s framework scores each stablecoin on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very strong and 5 is weak, based on asset quality, governance, legal and regulatory considerations, redeemability and liquidity, technology dependencies, and track record.
The firm emphasizes that these assessments aim to clarify depegging risk rather than opine on an issuer’s creditworthiness.
“The launch of SSAs on-chain through Chainlink underscores our commitment to meeting our clients where they are,” said Chuck Mounts, Chief DeFi Officer at S&P Global, in a press release.
Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said the integration lets institutions adopt stablecoins at scale by making S&P’s analysis available natively inside blockchain infrastructure.
The move lands as the stablecoin market grows in both size and policy relevance.
S&P cited a total market value of about $301 billion in October, up from $173 billion a year earlier, and noted that the United States established a federal framework for stablecoins over the summer.
Publishing S&P’s stablecoin views on chain means DeFi protocols can program risk gates, collateral haircuts, or trading limits that update as new assessments are posted, rather than relying on off-chain spreadsheets and manual governance votes.
Builders of lending markets, payment rails, and liquidity venues in the broader world of DeFi and DePIN can now plug S&P’s feed into liquidations logic, stablecoin allowlists, and treasury controls without custom plumbing.
For institutions, it creates a familiar language for operational risk that maps more neatly to internal policies. The practical effect is to narrow the translation gap between traditional risk frameworks and on-chain code.
S&P says the initial roster includes USDT and USDC alongside the rebranded Maker ecosystem’s USDS and DAI.
Scores update as issuers alter reserve policies or as market conditions change, which may influence how protocols set collateral parameters or how treasurers route flows. Tether’s scale and balance-sheet moves will remain a focal point.
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In late September, it Tether quietly grabs 8,888 bitcoin for its corporate treasury, underscoring how quickly stablecoin issuers can shift asset composition.
The partnership also reflects a steady migration of financial plumbing to blockchains.
Corporate and transaction banks are testing tokenized cash and settlement tools, and even national champions are experimenting.
Qatar National Bank turns to JPMorgan blockchain for cross-border corporate transfers, an example of how on-chain rails are creeping into enterprise workflows.
On the capital-markets side, exchange-facing crypto brands are entering public markets. Earlier this year, Gemini goes public on Nasdaq, a sign of growing investor scrutiny of digital-asset infrastructure.
The risk signals with S&P’s imprimatur can be read by smart contracts rather than just humans. That can raise the bar for stablecoin issuers, who face a more persistent lens on liquidity, transparency, and controls.
It could also make life easier for risk officers asked to green-light stablecoin usage for payments, settlements, or yield strategies, because the same metrics they rely on off chain are available to the applications executing those strategies on chain.
The launch starts on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 incubated by Coinbase, with expansion to other networks based on demand.
S&P and Chainlink position the effort as a way to give regulated institutions something closer to the tooling they expect in legacy markets.
