Tether, the company behind the $108 billion market cap USDT, plans to issue its dollar-pegged and gold-backed (XAUT) stablecoins natively on The Open Network (TON), a blockchain adjacent to messaging app Telegram, according to listings on the company's transparency page.
TON is a decentralized layer-1 network launched by Telegram but operating independently since the company abandoned its development due to regulatory concerns. The ecosystem has seen rapid growth lately with incentives for onboarding Telegram users, boosting the number of monthly active addresses to over 1.7 million from less than 100,000 six months ago, according to blockchain data by Tonstat. Telegram also recently switched to the network's native token, toncoin (TON), from euros as a payment for its advertisement platform.