Celo, Chainlink, Hyperlane launch crosschain USDT on OP Superchain

Blockchain infrastructure protocols Celo, Chainlink, Hyperlane and Velodrome have launched a crosschain version of Tether’s USDt (USDT) on the OP Superchain, in a move designed to improve the interoperability and liquidity of the world’s most widely used stablecoin.

According to a Feb. 18 announcement, the new Super USDT stablecoin will be fully backed by equivalent USDT reserves locked on Celo, an Ethereum scaling solution. Super USDT achieves its crosschain functionality through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol and Hyperlane, another open interoperability framework. 

The crosschain stablecoin is intended to provide essentially free access to USDT on Superchain, easing the burden of blockchains having to deploy a bridged version of the US dollar-pegged token. 

Currently, bridged USDT fragments the stablecoin’s liquidity across the Superchain, which is “at odds with Optimism’s vision for a unified, interoperable collective that benefits from shared liquidity,” Celo co-founder Rene Reinsberg told Cointelegraph, adding:

“These bridged assets are also not compatible with the forthcoming native Superchain interop standards or upgradable to native USDT, limiting future adoption of the stablecoin. While Super USDT is solving the current liquidity fragmentation issues, it’s also designed to grow with the collective.”

Super USDT makes it possible to “bring USDT anywhere on any Optimism chain,” said Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs. Eid told Cointelegraph:

“Chainlink Data Feeds have been used over the past half-decade to enable secure lending markets for USDT, including currently securing $3.7 billion in USDT deposits and $2.2 billion in borrows in Aave v3’s Core Ethereum deployment alone.”

Superchain is a collective of layer-2 solutions working to scale Ethereum using Optimism’s OP Stack. With the announcement, Super USDT is now available on Base, Fractal, Lisk, Metal, Mode, Optimism, Soneium, Superseded, Unichain and World Chain. 

Related: Stablecoin predictions for 2025: What’s next for the $200B market?

Crosschain capabilities on the rise

Tether’s USDt is the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with more than $140 billion in circulation. The company has prioritized interoperability through integrations with The Open Network and Arbitrum, an infrastructure provider powering Tether’s crosschain US dollar stablecoin.

Crosschain interoperability will help promote “broader USDt adoption” while increasing its scalability across networks, said Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs.

Despite Tether’s dominant market position, stablecoin competition is heating up. Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) is favored by institutions for its strong regulatory compliance, while Sky Protocol’s Dai (DAI) is widely used in decentralized finance circles. 

Stablecoin usage has already gone mainstream, with annualized transaction values reaching a record $15.6 trillion in 2024. According to ARK Invest, that’s higher than Visa and Mastercard. 

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