USAT Launches on Celo, Expanding Stablecoin Options

Tether's dollar-backed stablecoin USAT is now live on Celo, marking its first deployment outside of Ethereum's mainnet. The move follows an announcement in March that USAT would be integrated with Celo, and comes after a successful testing period.

Celo supports the minting and burning of USAT as well as gas fee payments using the stablecoin from day one. This is made possible by Celo's unique feature of allowing ERC-20 tokens to be used for gas payment, eliminating the need for users to hold native token CELO separately.

According to Celo, this integration will make USAT a major player in the stablecoin market, with over 50% of gas payments on the network already using stablecoins. This is also significant as Celo has become the largest flow-through network for Tether's dollar-backed stablecoin USDT, accounting for 28% of cross-chain USDT transfers.

Several wallets and protocols have announced support for USAT on Celo, including Valora and MiniPay from Opera, which together serve over 1.8 million users.