Leading Stablecoin USDT Launches on Kusama
Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin by reported market cap is set to launch on Kusama (KSM), the canary network of the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem.
USDT to Launch on Kusama Network
Boasting of a market cap of more than $80 billion, USDT is the largest and most significant stablecoin in the digital assets space. Now, Tether is getting ready to launch on Kusama, the so-called canary network of Polkadot.
For the uninitiated, Kusama is a scalable network of specialized blockchains built atop Substrate and utilizes almost the same codebase as Polkadot.
USDT’s launch on Kusama is a big milestone for the canary network as it opens the floodgates for fresh capital to enter the budding ecosystem and paves the way for the stablecoin’s launch on Polkadot sometime in the future.
Peter Mauric, head of public affairs at Polkadot developer Parity Technologies says accessibility and interoperability are the overarching goals of both Kusama and Polkadot as they already have parachain-specific stablecoin projects.
Mauric said:
“Different builders and institutions have their own preferences on the tech stack and products they interface with, and there is plenty of room for a variety of options within the crypto ecosystem. Tether’s deployment on Kusama is a clear indication that there is interest in having it available to builders in the Polkadot ecosystem alongside the Polkadot-native options that are launching as well.”
What Is Kusama Network About?
Being the canary network of the Polkadot ecosystem, Kusama can be considered the ‘test network’ where all innovations and experiments are done before they are moved on to the more conservative Polkadot network.
However, one should not be confused with the word ‘test’ in Kusama’s context as all the risks and capital deployed on the network are real. This is evident from the fact that at the time of writing, Kusama boasts of a market cap of more than $1.4 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.
Notably, at launch, USDT will have an asset tag that will help Polkadot and Kusama’s rule-operating relay chains to recognize tokens other than their respective native crypto assets, DOT and KSM.
Further, USDT will power transactions on Kusama’s Statemine (equivalent to the Statemine parachain on Polkadot). For the uninitiated, Statemine is a “public-good parachain” that is required for asset deployment and balance-keeping of fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) moving across different blockchains.
As far as the question of when Polkadot will launch USDT is concerned, Mauric said:
“Timeline is to be determined but I suspect that this Kusama deployment will serve much of the same ‘canary effect’ we saw in the Polkadot launch process for the relay chain and parachains, as a real-world proving ground for the tech before it is ready for production on Polkadot.”
In similar news, crypto.news reported that layer 1 smart contract platform Avalanche launched USDT on its network last year.
Despite being the market-leading stablecoin in terms of reported market cap, USDT continues to face stiff competition as recently as rival stablecoin USDC’s supply on the Ethereum blockchain overtook that of USDT.
