Tether stablecoin launches on OMG Network as Ethereum is 'vulnerable to severe network congestion'

Tether • June 1, 2020, 8:15AM EDT
UPDATED: June 1, 2020, 11:58AM EDT
The Block

Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, has been integrated into the OMG Network (formerly OmiseGO).

The integration will result in reduced transaction confirmation times and fees, Bitfinex announced on Monday. The exchange will enable USDT deposits and withdrawals on the OMG Network.

Vansa Chatikavanij, CEO of OMG Network, said the network supports “thousands of transactions per second at a third of the cost of the same transaction on Ethereum.” The OMG Network is a non-custodial, Layer-2 scaling solution for transferring value on Ethereum.

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Bitfinex said Ethereum is "vulnerable to severe network congestion" when it is under heavy demand. Ethereum’s total transaction throughput is capped at approximately 12 transactions per second (TPS). When transaction demand exceeds 12 TPS, settlement time increases, and gas fees can rise “significantly,” said Bitfinex.

Indeed, as The Block previously reported, Ethereum’s average gas prices have seen a significant rise since the beginning of the year. In March, especially, due to the violent market swings and unusually high transaction demands, the gas prices surged to over 100 Gwei at one point before settling down around the current average level of about 30 Gwei.

“By migrating USDt value transfers to the OMG Network we save costs, drive performance improvements and relieve pressure on the root chain network. This is good for Bitfinex and our customers, and the whole Ethereum ecosystem," said Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino.

With today's integration, Tether now works on seven blockchains - Algorand, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, OMG Network, and Tron. Ethereum by far remains the largest value settler for Tether, as The Block reported last week. Overall, around $212 billion worth of money was transferred via Tether in 2019.

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