Tether also confirms its throwing weight behind the post-Merge Ethereum

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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 believes that in order to avoid any dis­rup­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly when using our tokens in DeFi projects and plat­forms, it’s impor­tant that the tran­si­tion to POS is not weaponized to cause con­fu­sion and harm with­in the ecosystem.”

“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.

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 for the Ethereum, USDT and USDC ecosys­tems, as well as the broad­er cryp­to mar­ket as a whole.

Relat­ed: Insti­tu­tions flock­ing to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report

How­ev­er as Vita­lik Buterin recent­ly warned, their pow­er could poten­tial­ly cause issues in future Ethereum hard forks, as cen­tral­ized enti­ties such as Teth­er and Cir­cle could choose to uti­lize the forked chain of their own pref­er­ence, rather than what the Ethereum com­mu­ni­ty has proposed. 

“I think in the fur­ther future, that def­i­nite­ly becomes more of a con­cern. Basi­cal­ly, the fact that USDC’s deci­sion of which chain to con­sid­er as Ethereum could become a sig­nif­i­cant decider in future con­tentious hard forks,” he said. 

This week Ethereum will under­go its final Merge tri­al via the Goer­li test­net, and if all goes to plan, there is an expec­ta­tion that the Sept.19 Merge date is unlike­ly to be delayed. 



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