Tether Invests in Cross-Chain Tech Firm LayerZero Labs

Key Highlights

• Tether has announced that it made a direct investment in LayerZero Labs, which is a popular platform of cross-blockchain interoperability technology 
• This investment will help the platform to support the development of interoperability infrastructure used across the global digital asset ecosystem
• This platform will reduce the market fragmentation and boost the use of stablecoins for global settlements

On February 10, Tether, the leading stablecoin issuer behind USDT, announced its investment in LayerZero Labs, which is the creator behind a leading cross-chain interoperability protocol. 

Through this investment, Tether wants to develop “production-grade interoperability infrastructure” to enhance the global digital asset ecosystem, which can help both stablecoins and tokenized assets.

Tether Invests in LayerZero to Reduce Fragmentation in Digital Asset Ecosystem

To develop this, LayerZero Labs is expected to provide important technology that allows different kinds of digital assets to move securely between different blockchains. This infrastructure has already proven under live market conditions. 

Over the last few years, Everdawn Labs used LayerZero’s framework to launch USDt0 and XAUt0. This helps it to easily allow cross-chain transfers of value.

This new infrastructure will combine Tether’s own Wallet Development Kit (WDK), which is expected to create the most advanced foundation for digital asset payments and custody. 

Since the launch of USDt0, which is developed on LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token standard, it has generated over $70 billion in cross-chain transfers in less than a year.

“Tether invests in infrastructure that is already delivering real-world utility,” Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, stated in the press release. “LayerZero Labs has built interoperability technology that allows digital assets to be transferred in real-time across any transport layer and distributed ledger, enabling a fundamental utility within the financial industry. This enables digital assets to serve the infinite agentic AI economy that will require such primitives to orchestrate micro-payments at an unprecedented scale.”

“Tether is a company the world envies. They have turned a vision of borderless money into a reality,” Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero, said. “The success of USDt0 was an important stepping stone. Having Tether deepen its commitment with this investment is the ultimate validation. We are thrilled to continue building the rails for global permissionless markets together.”

With the new infrastructure, Tether is planning to address a current major issue, which is a fragmented ecosystem that also faces issues like liquidity. 

This will mainly help Tether’s native stablecoin, USDT, to become a prominent stablecoin in the global settlement infrastructure around countless blockchains. 

Also Read: Stablecoins Surge: $312B Market, Neobanks Fuel Real-World Use