Share this article
High Ethereum Fees Push Tether to Its Eighth Blockchain, OMG Network
Tether’s USDT is now live on scaling blockchain OMG Network in a bid to decrease pressure on its parent blockchain, Ethereum.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 9:45 a.m. Published Aug 19, 2020, 9:33 p.m.
Tether has adopted Ethereum scaling solution OMG Network amid record demand for settlement space on the “world computer.”
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
“The integration [between Tether and OMG Network] will result in a reduction of confirmation times delivering faster payments while fees will be reduced without compromising on-chain security,” Tether Inc. said in a blog Wednesday.
OMG Network can handle thousands of transactions at a third of the cost of Ethereum as a Layer 2 solution for Ethereum that batches transactions before settlement, OMG Network CEO Vansa Chatikavanij said in a statement.
Tether – now the third largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $13.1 billion – has become the token of choice for traders. It scores in the top three Ethereum “gas guzzlers” consistently, according to Ethgasstaion.
Adjacently, the cost to transact on Ethereum has grown in near lockstep with the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications (dapps) such as Uniswap and Compound.
Ethereum fees on the rise
High growth in both stablecoins and DeFi usage has had adverse results for Ethereum, which settles transactions for both finance applications.
Indeed, on Aug. 13, the average transaction fee on Ethereum broke all time-highs last set during the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) boom.
Read more: Decentralized Finance Frenzy Drives Ethereum Transaction Fees to All-Time Highs
“By migrating USDt value transfers to the OMG Network we save costs, drive performance improvements and relieve pressure on the root chain network,” Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement. “This is good for Bitfinex and our customers, and the whole Ethereum ecosystem.”
Tether issuance can be found on other blockchains including, but not limited to, Omni, Liquid and Tron.
OMG Network will also be used for withdrawals and deposits on Tether Inc. sister firm, Bitfinex, the blog states.
Batching Ethereum transactions on secondary layers, as OMG Network does, has become the preferred solution to scale the network. How to do so remains challenging from a technical perspective, however.
For example, Reddit announced a partnership with the Ethereum Foundation in June to white board possible solutions, such as batching transactions, for its native token.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
ZKsync Lite to Shut Down in 2026 as Matter Labs Moves On
The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset.
What to know:
- Matter Labs plans to deprecate ZKsync Lite, the first iteration of its Ethereum layer-2 network, the team said in a post on X over the weekend.
- The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset for an early proof-of-concept that helped validate their zero-knowledge rollup design choices before newer systems went live.
Top Stories
