After Solana, Tether Launches on Polkadot, Kusama

Another two chains for Tether: USDT will soon be available on Polkadot and Kusama. 

Tether Primed for Growth 

Tether is preparing to launch on another two blockchains. 

The Tether team has announced that USDT tokens will soon be deployed on Polkadot and Kusama, two Substrate-compatible projects backed by the Web3 Foundation.  

Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether, said of the move: 

“Tether is always considering innovative projects in the ecosystem. Each decision is based on the relative merits of each project and the overall benefits to the ecosystem as a whole. We are excited by the many possibilities that Polkadot offers to its growing community of developers and startups, particularly those relating to its nascent Defi ecosystem.”

USDT will first be available on Kusama, which is due to launch parachains ahead of Polkadot. Once parachains launch on Polkadot, the currency will also become available on the network. 

Polkadot and Kusama are just two of the many chains hoping to build a scalable platform for what’s become known as “Web3,” a decentralized iteration of the Internet.

The current leader in this race is Ethereum, though the high costs of using the network have raised questions over whether it will continue to dominate in the long term.  

Polkadot, designed to run parallelized transactions across several parachains, is arguably the best-poised project to catch up with Ethereum. Polkadot aims to achieve interoperability with other chains like Ethereum, allowing people to move activity from one chain to another seamlessly. Peter Mauric, head of public affairs at Parity Technologies, alluded to the idea of a world in which Tether could be used on Polkadot and other networks in a statement announcing the update. He said: 

“Teams building decentralized applications in with a multi-chain future in mind are increasingly looking towards established stablecoins that operate across numerous networks to ensure a smooth experience for their users”

USDT is the largest stablecoin and the fifth-largest cryptocurrency behind BTC, ETH, BNB, and DOT. 

Last month, it launched on Solana. It also works on Ethereum, EOS, Algorand, Binance Smart Chain, Omni, and Tron, among other chains. 

Much speculation has surrounded Tether’s USDT reserves. Many questioned whether U.S. dollars sufficiently backed the currency due to a lack of transparency surrounding business operations. However, the company settled an NYAG lawsuit in February, putting an end to the doubts many crypto followers had. Last month, independent accounting firm Moore Cayman attested that Tether held more than 100% of its stablecoin liabilities in reserves. 

Tether’s market cap is currently 42.4 billion. Of that figure, just over half is in the form of an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.