Agora is the New York based issuer of AUSD, a US dollar stablecoin whose reserves are managed by VanEck and custodied at State Street. Each AUSD token is backed one to one by cash, short duration US Treasury bills, and overnight reverse repurchase agreements held in a segregated reserve fund. The differentiator is the distribution model: instead of keeping all of the yield earned on those reserves, Agora shares it with the apps, exchanges, market makers, and wallets that integrate AUSD.
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Stablecoins now settle trillions of dollars in annual transfers, rivaling the major card networks. Within that market, AUSD positions itself as an institutional grade digital dollar that pairs recognizable TradFi custody with crypto native distribution economics.
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AUSD is a US dollar pegged stablecoin issued by Agora, a company founded in 2023 by Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady. Each token maintains a 1:1 relationship with the US dollar and is redeemable against a fully reserved fund. AUSD launched in 2024 and expanded across multiple chains through 2025 and into 2026.
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The founder mix is part of the story. Nick van Eck is the son of Jan van Eck, CEO of the asset manager VanEck, which manages the AUSD reserve portfolio. Drake Evans was a core contributor at Frax Finance, bringing the onchain mechanism design that makes AUSD usable as collateral inside lending markets and perp DEXs. Joe McGrady came from Coinbase and runs operations and banking. The combination gives Agora both the TradFi credibility to clear compliance reviews and the crypto native ergonomics to get integrated into DeFi.
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AUSD benefits from institutional support that distinguishes it from many competitors. VanEck is the investment manager of the Agora Reserve Fund, while State Street serves as cash custodian and fund administrator. VanEck has discretionary authority over the reserve portfolio under a defined mandate, the same structural arrangement it uses for its regulated funds.
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The reserve fund is structured to be bankruptcy remote, meaning the backing assets are legally separated from Agora's corporate balance sheet, so a failure of Agora the company would not impair the reserves.
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The reserve composition is intentionally conservative:

There is no commercial paper, no money market fund exposure, and no third party tokenized Treasuries in the reserve. Agora publishes a daily reserves view at agora.finance showing current supply and asset breakdown, supplemented by periodic third party attestations.
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Traditional stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle earn the yield on their reserves and keep effectively all of it. With short Treasury yields in the mid single digits, that float is the entire business model. Agora calls the incumbent approach a rent seeking model and inverts it by rebating a portion of the reserve yield to the partners that hold or distribute AUSD.
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In practice, the rebate flows to:

The mechanism is straightforward. Agora calculates accrued yield per partner, nets out operating costs and its own margin, and distributes the rebate either onchain in AUSD or offchain in USD. The split is negotiated per partner. There is no rebasing token and no second token to hold, which keeps AUSD itself a clean, non yield bearing dollar suitable for accounting and exchange listing. This turns AUSD from a cost center for integrators into a revenue line.
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AUSD is live across a broad set of networks including Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Injective, and others, with native issuance on each chain rather than wrapped or bridged supply. Each chain gets its own canonical AUSD contract minted directly by the issuer, so the supply held on Solana or Sui is a direct claim on the same pooled reserves rather than a bridge wrapped representation.
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For interoperability, Agora selected Wormhole as its core interoperability solution, using the Native Token Transfers framework to unify AUSD liquidity across chains. Cross chain transfers burn AUSD on the source chain and mint it on the destination, preserving the one to one reserve backing and avoiding the liquidity fragmentation that comes with wrapped assets.
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For users and integrators, native multi chain issuance means:

Agora raised a $50 million Series A in July 2025 led by Paradigm, following a $12 million seed round led by Dragonfly in 2024 that included Wintermute Ventures, Galaxy, and Consensys. AUSD has grown from zero to over $170 million in circulation across several ecosystems.
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Adoption milestones include:

The three institutional stablecoins look similar on the surface and differ underneath.

In short: USDC is the incumbent with the broadest distribution and the deepest regulatory perimeter. USDP is the most conservative on reserves and the narrowest on chains. AUSD matches USDC on backing quality while differentiating on yield share economics and a VanEck branded reserve story.
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AUSD carries the risks common to any fiat backed stablecoin, plus a few specific to a newer issuer:

Reserve transparency, segregated bankruptcy remote custody, and periodic attestations are the structural mitigants Agora points to against these risks.
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What makes AUSD different from USDC and USDT?
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AUSD shares a portion of its reserve yield with the partners that distribute and hold it, where USDC and USDT keep effectively all of the float. It also pairs a VanEck managed reserve with State Street custody and issues natively on each supported chain.
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Who manages and custodies AUSD reserves?
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VanEck is the investment manager of the Agora Reserve Fund, and State Street is the cash custodian and fund administrator. The reserve holds cash, short duration US Treasury bills, and overnight reverse repurchase agreements in a bankruptcy remote structure.
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Does AUSD pay yield to holders?
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AUSD itself is a non yield bearing dollar. The yield earned on reserves is rebated to integration partners such as exchanges, wallets, and DeFi protocols, who can choose to pass it through to their users. There is no rebasing and no second token to hold.
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What chains support AUSD?
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AUSD is live natively on Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Injective, and additional networks, with Wormhole Native Token Transfers handling cross chain movement.
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Who founded Agora?
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Agora was founded in 2023 by Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady. Nick van Eck is the son of VanEck CEO Jan van Eck, Drake Evans was a core contributor at Frax Finance, and Joe McGrady previously worked at Coinbase.
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Reserve composition, custody, and management arrangements drawn from agora.finance and reporting on the Agora Reserve Fund. Founder, funding, and investor information from Fortune's Series A coverage and Agora's seed round announcement. Chain deployments and interoperability from Wormhole's integration announcement and DeFiLlama's stablecoins dashboard, accessed May 2026. Comparison data for USDC and USDP from Circle and Paxos reserve disclosures.
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