Tether, the blockchain-enabled platform that powers the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, and OMG Network, a trustless, non-custodial, Layer-2 scaling solution for transferring value on Ethereum, have today announced that Tether (USDt) is live on the value transfer layer.

USDt holders will obtain the benefits of transacting on the OMG Network, which is built to reduce Ethereum congestion and gas fees with improved transaction speeds. The integration will result in a reduction of confirmation times delivering faster payments while fees will be reduced without compromising on-chain security.

“At Tether we are committed to driving innovation and improvements to our service to better support our customers,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether. “By migrating USDt value transfers to the OMG Network we save costs, drive performance improvements and relieve pressure on the root chain network. This is good for Bitfinex and our customers, and the whole Ethereum ecosystem.”

“Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Tether on the OMG Network that supports thousands of transactions per second at a third of the cost of the same transaction on Ethereum,” said Vansa Chatikavanij, CEO at OMG Network. “We’re delighted to address these fundamental issues and drive further growth and adoption of open financial services.”

The OMG Network will also facilitate USDt deposits and withdrawals at Bitfinex. “This will allow traders to react faster to trading opportunities and take advantage of arbitrage more efficiently between exchanges as the network grows,” said Ardoino.

The Ethereum blockchain is a valuable but limited resource, which, under heavy demand is vulnerable to severe network congestion. As each block has only a finite space available to users, total transaction throughput is capped at approximately 12 TPS. When transaction demand exceeds 12 TPS, settlement times increase and gas costs can rise significantly.

One such extreme congestion event occurred in March this year when the price of Ethereum crashed from $240 to $107, liquidating more than $10 billion from the market. The huge spike in demand from users looking to trade in response to the volatile price swings resulted in average network waiting times rising from 15 seconds to 44 minutes.

OMG Network is a platform that enables peer-to-peer transactions in real-time by scaling the Ethereum network. OMG’s More Viable Plasma solution batches numerous transactions in one block and charges one predictable, low-cost fee, allowing traders to react faster to trading opportunities and more efficiently arbitrage between exchanges as the network grows. For more information, please visit omg.network.