TL;DR Breakdown
- Tether has revealed its plans to launch USDT on Kusama and Polkadot blockchain to ensure more scalability.
- Already, USDT exists on eight blockchain networks, mostly on Ethereum.
Tether, the company behind the largest US dollar-backed stablecoin (USDT), is planning to extend the cryptocurrency to Kusama and Polkadot. In the coming year, the company believes the stablecoin has more potential to grow significantly; however, with more scalability. This explains its decision to launch on Polkadot, which is a more scalable blockchain than Ethereum.
In addition, Tether wants USDT to become the first major stablecoin to launch on the network.
USDT to launch on Polkadot
The company didn’t specify exactly when the stablecoin would debut on Kusama and Polkadot. However, the development is pending as they are yet to complete the formation of the parachains, which are diverse individual layer-1 blockchains that run in parallel within the Polkadot ecosystem. Upon completion, USDT will first launch on Kusama, an experimental development network for projects preparing to launch on Polkadot.
According to Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether, they are most likely to deploy the stablecoin on “Statemint parachain” when it goes live. This parachain was introduced in March to allow easy deployment of stablecoins and other digital assets on the Kusama and Polkadot network.
“We also continue to look at Kusama. […] Kusama would theoretically allow us to start experimenting with supporting Tether on parachains even before Statemint is officially live.”
Tether stablecoin will exist in ten blockchains
Note that the leading stablecoin is already a multi-chain asset. USDT is presently available on eight networks that include Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Algorand, and so on. Respectively, Ethereum and Tron are the two most-dominant blockchains for the stablecoin. About $22 billion USDT is available on Ethereum, while Tron holds nearly $20 million USDTs.
