By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 24th, 2024
According to the announcement, USDT will trade and facilitate transactions on the network’s first parachain Statemine.
Tether has announced the launch of its digital asset USDT on the Polkadot’s Kusama network. Kusama network acts as an experimental network for projects hoping to deploy on Polkadot.
Previously, the coin was only available on nine networks including Ethereum, Algorand, Solana and six others. Now, its holders will be able to explore the specific benefits of using the Kusama network. At launch, USDT will have asset tag 1984. This will allow Kusama’s relay chains to recognize the token.
Why Kusama Network?
According to the announcement, USDT will trade and facilitate transactions on the network’s first parachain Statemine. Statemine guarantees lower costs and faster transactions. It also ensures enhanced blockchain security, scalability, and interoperability. Thus, the latest launch on Kusama is expected to facilitate the development of decentralized apps.
According to the company, developers will be able to build trustless applications across chains and networks using the stablecoin. Chief Technology Officer at Tether, Paolo Ardoino, expressed excitement about the launch. He noted that Kusama is the perfect platform for those who believe in permissionless ecosystems.
“It [Kusama] is a platform built to put the control in the hands of its users and we are looking forward to becoming an essential asset in its growing ecosystem,” he concluded.
Ardonia reiterated that Tether was offering no less than the most liquid, stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space.
A Win for Polkadot
The public affairs head at Parity Technology (who oversees Polkadot development) noted the launch was a milestone for Kusama. He further went on to state that it would also be a milestone event for Polkadot. Mauric believes that Kusama will provide a testing ground for the stablecoin before it can be deployed on Polkadot.
“I suspect that this Kusama deployment will serve much of the same ‘canary effect’ we saw in the Polkadot launch process,” he said.
The market capitalization of USDT stands at about $80 billion. Consequently, it is the third-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum. The closest stablecoin to it is Circle’s USDC which has a valuation of about $50 billion. USDC recently attracted interest from the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock. It is expected that the interest may cause further growth in the stablecoins.