Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, is coming on the Kusama network, followed by a launch on the Polkadot blockchain. The exact schedule has not been finalized yet.
The aim is for USDT to be the first-ever stablecoin on the Polkadot network and the launch date depends on the launch of the parachain mainnet on Kusama and Polkadot. Parachain functionality on Polkadot is still in testnet phases and expected to go live somewhere in 2021.
Before deploying on Polkadot, Tether will launch on Kusama, a canary network of Polkadot that allows teams to do testing before deploying on Polkadot, which itself will launch parachains at least a few weeks before Polkadot.
According to Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer of Tether, the stablecoin will be launched on the very first parachain available and most likely launch on the Statemint parachain soon after Statemint becomes available.
Statemint has recently been introduced by Parity Technologies. Parachain slots on Polkadot are allocated in two ways: through auction and governance. The parachains that are granted slots via governance, known as common-good parachains. Statemint will be the first common-good parachain developed by Parity Technology itself. It would be generic assets parachain that would provide functionality for deploying assets, from tokenized artwork to stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies, in the Polkadot and Kusama networks.
The launch of the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap of more than $43 billion further signifies the position of Polkadot as the next big DeFi platform. This launch will follow the USDT launch on the Solana blockchain.
Tether’s planned USDT launch on Kusama and Polkadot would make the stablecoin available on a total of ten networks. USDT is currently live on Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, Tron, and Bitcoin Cash’s Standard Ledger Protocol.
Originally launched in July 2014 as Realcoin, a second-layer cryptocurrency token built on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain through the use of the Omni platform. Then it was migrated to other networks. Ethereum is currently the most popular network for USDT as out of $43 billion, nearly $23 billion worth of USDT has been issued on Ethereum, followed by Tron, worth almost $20 billion. But it has not gained much traction on other networks.
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