"Celo, Chainlink, Hyperlane, and Velodrome Team Up to Launch Crosschain USDT on OP Superchain"

Celo, Chainlink, Hyperlane, and Velodrome have collaborated to launch a crosschain version of Tether's USDT (USDT) on the OP Superchain, aiming to enhance the interoperability and liquidity of the world's most widely used stablecoin. The new Super USDT stablecoin is fully backed by equivalent USDT reserves locked on Celo, an Ethereum scaling solution. It achieves crosschain functionality through Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol and Hyperlane, an open interoperability framework.

The crosschain stablecoin is designed to provide essentially free access to USDT on Superchain, reducing the burden on blockchains to deploy a bridged version of the US dollar-pegged token. Currently, bridged USDT fragments the stablecoin's liquidity across the Superchain, which is at odds with Optimism's vision for a unified, interoperable collective that benefits from shared liquidity. Super USDT is intended to solve these liquidity fragmentation issues while also growing with the collective.

Super USDT makes it possible to bring USDT anywhere on any Optimism chain, according to Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs. With the announcement, Super USDT is now available on Base, Fractal, Lisk, Metal, Mode, Optimism, Soneium, Superseded, Unichain, and World Chain.

Tether's USDt is the world's largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with more than $140 billion in circulation. The company has prioritized interoperability through integrations with The Open Network and Arbitrum, an infrastructure provider powering Tether's crosschain US dollar stablecoin. Crosschain interoperability will help promote broader USDt adoption while increasing its scalability across networks, as stated by Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs.

Despite Tether's dominant market position, stablecoin competition is heating up. Circle's USD Coin (USDC) is favored by institutions for its strong regulatory compliance, while Sky Protocol's Dai (DAI) is widely used in decentralized finance circles. Stablecoin usage has already gone mainstream, with annualized transaction values reaching a record $15.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing Visa and Mastercard, according to ARK Invest.