Hot around the heels of the official announcement from USD Gold coin (USDC) issuer Circle Pay, stablecoin giant Tether has also formally confirmed its support behind Ethereum’s approaching Merge upgrade and change to an evidence-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism-based blockchain.
The announcement came on the day that since it’s stablecoin competitor, who promised they’ll only support Ethereum’s long awaited upgrade.
Inside a Tuesday statement, Tether labeled the Merge among the “most significant moments in blockchain history” and outlined that it’ll operate in compliance with Ethereum’s upgrade schedule, that is presently slated to undergo on Sept. 19:
“Tether believes that to prevent any disruption towards the community, particularly when using our tokens in DeFi projects and platforms, it’s essential that the transition to POS isn’t weaponized to result in confusion and harm inside the ecosystem.”
“Tether will carefully stick to the progress and formulations with this event and can support POS Ethereum using the official schedule. We feel that the smooth transition is important for that lengthy term health from the DeFi ecosystem and it is platforms, including individuals using our tokens,” Tether added.
As the official statement only arrived on the scene today, the stablecoin issuer’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino had already formerly suggested for This summer they planned to aid the publish-Merge Eth2.
I resulted in we intend to support ETH2.
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) This summer 31, 2022
Tether (USDT) is presently the biggest stablecoin in crypto, having a total market cap of $66.6 billion, while USDC is comparatively close behind at $54.1 billion, based on CoinGecko. Both stablecoins have a lot of their circulating supply on Ethereum’s current proof-of-work (Bang) blockchain, with USDT at $32.3 billion and USDC taking the very best place at $45.1 billion during the time of writing.
Given how big these stablecoins as well as their dominance within the stablecoin market, the show of the support in cases like this should create a smooth transition for that Ethereum, Tether and USD Gold coin environments, along with the broader crypto market in general.
Related: Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight days as Merge gets near: Report
However, as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin lately cautioned, their ability could cause issues later on Ethereum hard forks, as centralized entities for example Tether and Circle could decide to make use of the forked chain that belongs to them preference instead of exactly what the Ethereum community has suggested.
“I think within the further future, that certainly gets to be more of the concern. Essentially, the truth that USDC’s decision which chain to think about as Ethereum turn into a substantial decider later on contentious hard forks,” he stated.
Stablecoin issuers (Circle/Tether) control fork choice in Ethereum.
What goes on once the condition pressures Circle to aid a fork which goes against “eth community social contract?” https://t.co/dP7ZPFiJ0u
— Brandon Quittem (@Bquittem) August 6, 2022
Now Ethereum will undergo its final Merge trial through the Goerli testnet, and when all would go to plan, there’s an expectation the Sept.19 Merge date rarely is in delayed.
