Tether Discontinues USDT Support on Five Legacy Blockchains

Tether, Inc. has announced that it will discontinue support for USDT tokens on five legacy blockchains effective September 1. The affected chains include Omni Layer, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Kusama, EOS, and Algorand. This decision is part of Tether's strategic shift to focus on networks with higher DeFi activity and a broader user base, aiming to optimize its infrastructure based on the latest usage trends.

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, emphasized the company's commitment to adapting to the evolving digital asset ecosystem. By discontinuing support for these legacy chains, Tether can concentrate on platforms that offer greater scalability, developer activity, and community engagement, which are crucial for driving the next wave of stablecoin adoption. The move is expected to have a negligible impact on the overall supply of USDT, as the affected networks have extremely low traffic and have not developed robust DeFi applications.

All remaining USDT tokens on the legacy chains will be frozen as of September 1. Holders of these tokens will need to find tools to swap their assets before the freeze. Tether customers may request a reissuance on another chain, and different providers may offer tools to facilitate this swap, depending on where the tokens are stored. The chains affected by this decision, such as EOS, Omni, SLP, Algorand, and Kusama, have relatively low circulating supplies of USDT, with EOS having around 4.3 million USDT, Omni carrying approximately 87 million tokens, SLP with under 1 million tokens, Algorand with around 841,000 tokens, and Kusama with 239,000 tokens.

Tether's decision to discontinue support for these legacy chains is part of a broader strategy to expand its USDT issuance to new Layer 2 (L2) chains, particularly those with native DeFi projects. This move is aimed at increasing liquidity for DeFi, lending, and decentralized exchange (DEX) pairs, where USDT remains a key source of liquidity. The decision to issue more USDT on new chains will be based on developer activity and user engagement metrics. By targeting L2 chains, Tether aims to catch up with Circle's USDC usage, which is currently leading in terms of stablecoin supply on chains like Arbitrum and Base.

Tether continues to mint USDT on TRON, with another 1 billion tokens created recently. TRON is becoming the leading chain for USDT in terms of daily users, surpassing the supply on Ethereum. This expansion on TRON is driven by increasing demand and circulation, reflecting the growing adoption of USDT as a stablecoin. The total supply of stablecoins has expanded above $250 billion, with Tether breaking above 160 billion tokens. In the past month, USDT added another 2.42% to its supply, while USDC expanded by 2.01%.