What is Tether?
Launched in 2014, Tether is a blockchain-enabled platform designed to facilitate the use of fiat currencies in a digital manner. Tether works to disrupt the conventional financial system via a more modern approach to money. Tether has made headway by giving customers the ability to transact with traditional currencies across a blockchain, without the inherent volatility and complexity typically associated with a digital currency. As the first blockchain-enabled platform to facilitate the digital use of traditional currencies (a familiar, stable accounting unit), Tether has democratised cross-border transactions across a blockchain.
Tether Tokens exist as digital tokens built on several leading blockchains, including Algorand, Celo, Cosmos, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Solana, Tezos, Ton, and Tron. These transport protocols consist of open source software that interface with blockchains to allow for the issuance and redemption of Tether Tokens. For a full list of supported blockchains and protocols, please see our
.
Tether was originally created to use the Bitcoin network as its transport protocol—specifically, the Omni Layer—to allow transactions of tokenised traditional currency. Tether on the Ethereum blockchain, as an ERC20 token, is a newer transport layer, which now makes Tether Tokens available in Ethereum smart contracts or decentralized applications on Ethereum. As a standard ERC20 token it can also be sent to any Ethereum address.
Since Tether Tokens are currently available using different transport protocols, when users send Tether Tokens to other addresses, they need to carefully check the destination address to confirm they are selecting the correct transport protocol.
Tron (stylized as
TRON) is a
,
with
functionality. The
native to the blockchain is known as Tronix (TRX). It was founded in March 2014 by
and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a
in
, established in the same year. It is
.
Tron was originally an
-based
, which switched its protocol to its own blockchain in 2018. On some cryptocurrency wallets, users can't withdraw their funds until they have enough amount for the network fee.
USDT Introduction
USDT is the USD-pegged stablecoin issued by Tether on the TRON network. The token will be able to complete issuance, holding and transfer via smart contract on TRON, with a completely free and transparent process, zero transfer fee, and instant delivery; it will also be able to write programs that are highly expansible based on smart contract. TRC20 based USDT enables interoperability with TRON-based protocols and Decentralised Applications (DApps) while allowing users to transact and exchange fiat pegged currencies across the TRON Network.
For a short period, Tether managed United States dollar transactions through Taiwanese banks, which worked with
to enable the transfer of funds outside of Taiwan. On 18 April 2017, Tether shared that these international transfers had come to a stop. Tether issues tokens on
, Avalanche, Celo,
,
, Liquid Network, Near, Polygon, Solana,
's Standard Ledger Protocol, Statemint,
, and Tron.
