OpenEden’s token EDEN rallied sharply after Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced its listing on Aug. 10. The initial market response was limited. The breakout came four days later, on Aug. 14, when EDEN rose 92.04% in a single day and touched a high of $0.086.
That jump, large on its own, looks very different in the context of EDEN’s broader trading history. When Binance formally listed EDEN on Sept. 30, 2025, the token opened as high as $1.4. It then trended lower and spent much of May through July 2026 trading in the $0.035 to $0.045 range. Even after the Upbit-driven rally, EDEN still trades at less than one-tenth of its Binance opening high.
The move leaves OpenEden facing the same question that has followed the project for months: if the underlying asset base is growing, why has the token failed to keep up? That is the central valuation problem around OpenEden.
What OpenEden is building
OpenEden was founded in 2022 by Jeremy Ng, former head of Gemini Asia Pacific, and Eugene Ng, Gemini’s former head of business development for the region. The protocol focuses on compliant tokenization of real-world assets such as U.S. Treasuries and on bringing those products into on-chain finance.
The core idea is straightforward: move short-term U.S. Treasuries, one of the safest asset classes in traditional finance, onto blockchain rails so on-chain capital can access Treasury-linked yield around the clock. Since its launch in early 2023, OpenEden has become the largest issuer of tokenized U.S. Treasuries in Asia and Europe.
The company has built three core products around that thesis, expanding from Treasuries into credit products.
TBILL
TBILL was OpenEden’s first product and remains the foundation of the broader system. It represents a tokenized claim on a basket of short-term U.S. Treasuries. The underlying assets are held by a professional investment fund registered in the British Virgin Islands, while the Treasuries are managed by BNY Mellon Investment Management and custodied at BNY Mellon.
TBILL currently has about $253 million in total value locked. The fund carries an AA+ rating from S&P Global and is also described as the first tokenized RWA product globally to receive Moody’s investment-grade A rating.
USDO
USDO, also called OpenDollar, is OpenEden’s second product. It is a regulated yield-bearing stablecoin offering roughly 3.1% annualized yield. USDO is fully backed by tokenized Treasury exposure including OpenEden TBILL, and it also holds an AA+ rating from S&P Global. Its current TVL stands at about $26.78 million.
HYBOND
HYBOND, launched in April 2026, is OpenEden’s latest product. It is the first tokenized bond product linked to the BNY Mellon Global Short-Dated High Yield Bond Fund. The target annualized yield is about 7%, and current TVL is around $5.37 million.
How the system works
OpenEden’s operating model follows two tracks: compliance first, and on-chain transparency.
On the subscription and minting side, investors complete KYC or KYB checks and place their wallet addresses on a whitelist. They can then deposit USDC through the TBILL Vault to mint TBILL tokens. Those tokens are self-custodied in private wallets, giving users direct control and ownership over their positions. Fund NAV is published after the end of each business day, and holders can review account statements and on-chain proof of reserves through the dashboard.
On redemption, investors can redeem TBILL tokens from the TBILL Vault back into USDC. USDO also supports instant redemption. When a user triggers that function, the USDO liquidity manager sends the underlying TBILL to the TBILL protocol. The protocol then uses its BUIDL configuration to redeem USDC from the Circle BUIDL smart contract and returns the USDC to the user. Standard redemption usually settles within one business day and no later than two business days.
On compliance and disclosure, KYC and AML checks run through the full subscription and redemption process, and some products are limited to qualified investors or onboarded institutional users. OpenEden has integrated Chainlink Proof of Reserve for real-time transparency into the underlying assets. It also publishes daily reserve reports from regulated custodians, monthly valuation reports from third-party fund managers, and monthly attestation reports from independent auditors.
Team, investors and partners
According to OpenEden’s website, Jeremy Ng and Eugene Ng co-founded the company in 2022 after building out Gemini’s Asia Pacific team. Jeremy had served as Gemini’s head of Asia Pacific, while Eugene had led business development for the region. At OpenEden, Jeremy became chief executive officer and Eugene took the role of co-founder.
The Block has reported that Eugene is also a co-founder of DWF Labs and was accused in 2024 of spiking a woman’s drink. OpenEden has removed him from its team page.
Other key members of the core team include co-founder and chief technology officer Duke Du, as well as general counsel Wayne Tan. Wayne Tan joined OpenEden in June 2024 after serving as legal lead for Sygnum Bank Singapore. OpenEden says he has more than 12 years of experience in legal, regulatory and compliance framework building across blockchain and digital assets.
On funding, OpenEden completed a strategic round in December 2025. Participants included Ripple, Lightspeed Faction, Gate Ventures, FalconX, Anchorage Digital Ventures, Flowdesk, P2 Ventures, Selini Capital, Kaia Foundation and Sigma Capital.
The project has also built a broad partner network across custody, compliance, market access and institutional services.
- Custody and compliance partners include BNY Mellon, BitGo, HexTrust, Standard Chartered-backed Zodia Custody and Rakkar Digital.
- On institutional services, Hidden Road Partners allows institutions to use TBILL as financing collateral.
- On trading venues, Hong Kong-licensed virtual asset platform EX.IO has become OpenEden’s first VATP partner in Hong Kong.
- On institutional trading and liquidity, FalconX has integrated OpenEden’s USDO.
Rising assets, limited protocol revenue
The gap between business growth and token performance becomes clearer in the revenue data.
According to DefiLlama, TBILL, OpenEden’s most important product, has $253 million in TVL and generates about $310,000 in annualized revenue.
The revenue mix matters more than the headline number. DefiLlama’s figures for the second quarter of 2026 show OpenEden generated total revenue of $431,000 during the period. Of that, $292,000 came from asset-side yield, meaning interest generated by the underlying Treasuries. Management fee revenue, by contrast, was only $39,600.
Most of the economic value produced by the underlying assets is passed through to holders of TBILL and USDO, while the platform itself keeps only a very small management fee. That is not a matter of operating efficiency. It reflects the way the business model is designed. Even if TVL keeps growing, direct protocol revenue remains limited.
EDEN still lacks a direct link to protocol economics
The token structure creates another problem. EDEN has a total supply of 1 billion and completed its token generation event on Sept. 30, 2025. Team, advisor and investor allocations were all subject to a six-month lock-up and 24-month linear vesting schedule.
In March 2026, the team said it would extend the vesting period by an additional nine months, ensuring that no team or advisor tokens would enter the market before at least January 2027.
That move did not solve the core issue. EDEN’s current use cases center on governance, staking and ecosystem incentives. None of those functions is directly tied to protocol revenue. Even if TBILL’s TVL were to reach $1 billion, EDEN holders would not automatically receive any share of that income. The business can grow without creating a direct economic transmission mechanism to the token.
OpenEden did deploy 30,000 USDC in 2026 to buy back EDEN on the open market. But in the project’s official documentation, buyback and burn are still labeled only as a potential future use case.
Upbit’s listing gave EDEN a burst of short-term momentum. It did not resolve the valuation question underneath. OpenEden has assembled a product suite around tokenized Treasuries and credit, paired with a relatively complete compliance structure, custody setup and institutional partner base. What it has not yet built is a tight link between growth in underlying assets, growth in protocol revenue and value capture for EDEN holders.