Tether launches on Solana blockchain

Stablecoin issuer Tether has launched its USDT coin on Solana, a Layer-1 blockchain whose developers claim is faster and cheaper than Ethereum.

Revealing the news exclusively to The Block on Wednesday, Tether said Solana can help users exchange USDT at speeds greater than 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), often for less than $0.00001 per transaction.

In comparison, Ethereum's current capacity is about 15 transactions per second, and the current average fee is about $2.65 per transaction.

Solana has seen growing adoption by major companies recently. Last month, crypto exchange FTX launched its decentralized exchange, called Serum, on Solana. At the time, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried called Solana "awesome" and claimed that it is "10,000 times faster and 1,000,000 times cheaper than Ethereum."

With the Solana integration, Tether now works on eight blockchains: Algorand, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, OMG Network, and Tron.

Anatoly Yakovenko, the creator of Solana and president of the Solana Foundation, said the Tether integration was "absolutely essential." Yakovenko called USDT the "lifeblood of DeFi [decentralized finance] and an important pillar of the crypto community at large."

"Solana was originally designed to support thousands of transactions at Nasdaq speed. Today, with Tether's support, Solana is finally capable of realizing that dream," Yakovenko added.

USDT is one of the most used stablecoins in the DeFi sector. According to The Block Research, the top three DeFi protocols by total value locked — Uniswap, Aave, and Curve — have total USDT deposits worth $863 million as of September 9.

Tether is planning to add support for yet more blockchains. "We can't disclose names yet, because the due diligence is not finished yet. But we have three in the pipeline," Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino told The Block.