Hot on the heels of an official announcement from USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle Pay, stablecoin giant Tether has now also officially confirmed its support behind Ethereum’s upcoming Merge upgrade and switch to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism-based blockchain.
The announcement came on the same day as its stablecoin competitor, who pledged they will only support Ethereum’s highly anticipated upgrade.
In an Aug. 9 statement, Tether labeled the Merge one of the “most significant moments in blockchain history” and outlined that it will work in accordance with Ethereum’s upgrade schedule, which is currently slated to go through on Sept. 19.
“Tether will closely follow the progress and preparations for this event and will support POS Ethereum in line with the official schedule. We believe that a smooth transition is essential for the long term health of the DeFi ecosystem and its platforms, including those using our tokens,” Tether added.
While the official statement only came out today, the stablecoin issuer's chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino had already previously indicated in July that they planned to support the post-Merge ETH2.
I meant that we plan to support ETH2.
USDT is currently the largest stablecoin in crypto with a total market cap of $66.6 billion, while USDC is relatively close behind at $54.1 billion according to CoinGecko. Both stablecoins have a significant amount of their circulating supply on Ethereum’s current Proof-of-Work blockchain, with USDT at $32.3 billion and USDC taking the top spot at $45.1 billion at the time of writing.
Given the size of these stablecoins and their dominance over the stablecoin market, the show of this support in this instance should result in a smooth transition
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