OTL Network (Open Transaction Layer) launched on May 28, 2026 with a founding cohort that crosses payments, wallets, brokerage, banking, prime trading, market making, and emerging-market exchange rails. The seven backers most often named in coverage are Checkout.com, MetaMask, eToro, Cross River Bank, Falcon X, B2C2, and Coins.ph. The combined list of founding members is larger and includes Fireblocks (the convener), Robinhood, SoFi, WalletConnect, Wintermute, Securitize, Moonpay, Privy, Bridge, and the Blockchain Payments Consortium, per the launch announcement on fireblocks.com and reporting by Crypto Briefing and Ledger Insights.
​

This article describes each of the seven most-searched founders, what they do today, and what their stated participation in OTL signals. It does not endorse OTL or any partner.
​

OTL's backer list matters because the seven named founders are concentrated in three operational categories institutions actually use: payments processing (Checkout.com), wallet distribution (MetaMask), and trading or settlement (eToro, Falcon X, B2C2, Cross River, Coins.ph). A protocol pitched as a coordination standard needs cooperation from each category, and the founder list maps to that.
​

Idan Ofrat, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Fireblocks, framed the launch this way in a statement reported by Crypto Briefing: "A standard like this isn't something any single vendor can ship. It only works as an open initiative, built by the people implementing it." The seven named founders span enough of the institutional onchain stack that the claim is at least plausible on paper, though no protocol has yet been adopted in production by all seven at the time of the May 28, 2026 launch.
​

The table below summarizes each named founder, what they do today, and what their stated participation in OTL signals.
​

Each section below describes one partner in more detail.
​

Checkout.com is a UK-headquartered payments processor that handles card acquiring, alternative-payment-method connectivity, and merchant settlement for online businesses. The company provides fiat processing for eight of the twelve largest crypto exchanges, including Blockchain.com and Crypto.com, per Checkout.com's product blog.
​

In 2023 Checkout.com launched a stablecoin settlement product using Fireblocks infrastructure, letting merchants receive payouts in USDC 24/7 rather than waiting for weekend or holiday clearing windows. The same Fireblocks payments stack that powers Checkout.com's stablecoin settlement is the convening party behind OTL. Checkout.com is named in OTL's announcement as a founding participant, which means a payment processor that already runs stablecoin merchant flows is contributing to the specification work. It does not imply Checkout.com has implemented OTL in any production path.
​

MetaMask is the most-distributed self-custody Ethereum browser wallet, with approximately 30 million monthly active users as of 2026 per Token Terminal. It supports Ethereum and EVM-compatible networks including BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, and Avalanche.
​

MetaMask matters to OTL because the launch announcement explicitly mentions "unhosted wallets" alongside institutions and AI agents as the parties OTL's identity and messaging layers are designed to coordinate between. Any coordination standard that excludes self-custody wallets cuts itself off from the majority of onchain activity. MetaMask's participation as a named founder signals that the specification is being shaped with unhosted-wallet flows in mind from the start, not retrofitted later. MetaMask is owned by Consensys; its participation is at the company level, not a token-holder vote.
​

eToro is a multi-asset brokerage offering equities, crypto, and CFD trading. The company went public on Nasdaq in May 2025 under the ticker ETOR, pricing its IPO at $52 per share and closing its debut day at $67 for a market capitalization above $5.4 billion, per CNBC. Crypto assets accounted for 96% of eToro's 2024 revenue per its S-1 filing.
​

eToro's involvement as a named OTL founder is notable because public-company brokerages move slowly on emerging protocols. The compliance and disclosure overhead of joining a named initiative is higher for a listed entity. eToro is named in OTL's announcement as a participant, which suggests OTL's framing of the protocol as a compliance and coordination standard, rather than a permissionless DeFi product, is acceptable to a Nasdaq-listed broker's legal and risk review.
​

Cross River Bank is a US state-chartered, FDIC-insured commercial bank that serves as the regulated banking partner behind dozens of fintech platforms. Cross River is a banking partner for Circle's USDC issuance, is reported in 2026 coverage as a candidate bank partner for X's X Money platform, and was selected as the initial US banking partner for Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot per The Fintech Times.
​

In November 2025 Cross River launched a stablecoin payments product that integrates fiat and stablecoin flows through its core banking system, COS, per the Cross River newsroom. Cross River's participation as a named OTL founder signals that a chartered US bank counterparty is part of the coordination spec, which matters for any OTL workflow that touches fiat on-ramp, off-ramp, or insured deposit movements. It does not signal regulatory endorsement of OTL itself.
​

Falcon X (stylized as FalconX) is an institutional crypto prime brokerage offering spot, derivatives, financing, custody, and OTC services to hedge funds, asset managers, and family offices. The firm reports over 600 institutional clients and cumulative trading volume above $2.5 trillion across its history per FalconX. FalconX also publicly describes a partnership with Standard Chartered to connect its trading platform with global banking infrastructure.
​

Falcon X's participation as a named OTL founder signals that institutional prime brokers, who today rely on bespoke bilateral integrations with each counterparty and custodian, see value in a shared coordination standard. The Fireblocks framing of OTL, that institutions currently build "bespoke connections to orchestrate their digital asset operations end-to-end," is the exact pain point a prime broker integration team would recognize.
​

B2C2 is a digital asset liquidity provider that operates an OTC desk for institutional counterparties. B2C2 reports cumulative trading volumes above $2 trillion since founding, per its own PENNY announcement, and per a 2026 Paypers interview trades roughly $2 billion in stablecoins daily and serves a wide institutional book across global digital-asset exchanges.
​

B2C2's stated participation in OTL signals that liquidity providers, whose business depends on settling trades quickly and reliably with hundreds of counterparties, see coordination overhead as a real cost. B2C2 also operates a stablecoin swap product called PENNY that targets fragmentation across stablecoin issuers. A coordination layer that standardizes how counterparties exchange settlement instructions and compliance data could compress B2C2's integration costs across its institutional book.
​

Coins.ph is a Philippines-licensed crypto exchange and wallet regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas under both Virtual Currency and Electronic Money Issuer licenses. The platform has over 16 million users and supports BTC, ETH, SOL, and major stablecoins alongside a broader list of cryptocurrencies, per coins.ph. Coins.ph was the first crypto company in Asia to hold both VC and EMI licenses from a central bank.
​

Coins.ph's participation as a named OTL founder is the clearest signal that OTL's coordination scope extends beyond US and EU institutional flows into Asia-Pacific emerging-market exchange rails. Cross-border remittance flows into the Philippines are a meaningful share of national GDP, and stablecoin remittance products have grown sharply in the region. Whether OTL becomes a coordination standard for emerging-market exchange flows depends on adoption that has not yet been demonstrated as of May 2026.
​

The combined OTL founder footprint signals an institutional-coordination protocol rather than a consumer-facing product. Every named founder is either a regulated entity, a self-custody wallet with regulatory engagement, or an institutional trading or liquidity firm. None are DeFi protocols, retail-facing yield products, or anonymous teams. The mix lines up with the Fireblocks framing of OTL as a compliance and messaging spec for institutions.
​

Beyond the seven covered above, the full founding cohort published at otl.network includes Robinhood and SoFi as additional listed brokerages, Wintermute as a second named market maker, Moonpay, Privy, Bridge, Xendit, Tazapay, Taptap Send, and Triple-A on the on-ramp and cross-border payment side, Securitize for tokenized securities, WalletConnect on the wallet side, Zengo and Zerocap for custody, Zerohash for settlement, and the Blockchain Payments Consortium covering the chain-foundation side with the TON Foundation, Stellar Development Foundation, Polygon, Solana Foundation, Monad Foundation, Sui Foundation, and Mysten Labs. The seven covered in detail above are the most-named in launch coverage and the most-searched.
​

For context on adjacent layers, intent-routing protocols such as Eco Routes sit above transport rails like Hyperlane and CCTP and below the institutional-coordination layer OTL targets. The two solve different problems for different audiences: intent routers compress builder integration effort for cross-chain stablecoin movement, while OTL targets the institutional counterparty-coordination problem Fireblocks identifies in its launch material. Whether OTL achieves the cross-institutional adoption its founder list implies remains a 2026 to 2027 question, not a May 2026 conclusion.
​

Sources and methodology. Partner identities and founding-member list verified against otl.network, the Fireblocks OTL launch blog, Crypto Briefing, and Ledger Insights reporting from May 28, 2026. Per-partner financial and user statistics traced to each company's own disclosure or first-party press coverage and dated within the section. Updated May 2026.
​