ERC-20 Tether now accounts for 40% of all ERC-20 transfers
Over the last month, ERC-20 Tether transactions have skyrocketed to an all-time high, and have, over the last week, accounted for just over 40% of ALL ERC-20 transfers:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/082fefdb410cfef487ce1407cdae966983049cc92ba29c1309b6b54fc6355325_1568302695417_share%20of%20tether%20trxs.png)
In absolute numbers, out of the average of 430,000 daily transfers over the past week, an average of 180,000 came from ERC-20 USDT:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/84302c111da81b3cdd1489861f401523a7c2a4f12eff379376bd1b2eaab0417d_1568302745563_tether%20vs%20all%20erc.png)
The rise of USDT-ETH can be traced back to several major exchanges either abandoning the Omni Protocol altogether or introducing support for its ERC-20 counterpart:
- On February 27th, Huobi announced support for deposits & withdrawals in Tether ERC20
- On July 3rd, Binance announced it would phase out Omni-based Tether and open only ERC-20 wallets for the stablecoin
- The same day, Poloniex announced support for ERC-20 Tether
Tether’s rise on Ethereum could be attributed to several reasons, including the fact that ERC-20 Tether is faster and requires less fees (making it better suited for arbitrage and trading), as well as the company’s attempt to diversify its protocol holdings and migrate to a more actively developed and maintained protocol.
Whatever the case, over the summer - and especially the last month - the amount of ERC-20 USDT’s daily active addresses has absolutely ballooned. In the past week, all but one day recorded over 100,000 active USDT-ETH addresses:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a2ae479f060fb19d65d6310686af200092203931f27d177045cdb6b6e58c0151_1568302786265_tether%20daa.png)
That chart is unlikely to plateau either, as Tether announced yesterday that it’s converting another 300 million USDT to the ERC-20 protocol:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/fdd21545057ed96fb9ba844ab36ea9999cfddcc1a7ce9c18742cf16fa0f3cf17_1568302817266_tether%20tweet.png)
Simultaneously, the share of ERC-20 Tether on exchanges has been steadily dropping over the last month:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/68c15d26d9d62eed578232683796029987c9be67a11e0604dc96a351b9045fdb_1568302824708_percent%20supply.png)
As expected, the share of Tether-related gas fees has been on a decided uptrend as well:
![](https://production-sanbase-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/dd58c8ca461dfc15ff064c96cb81f6905941a29ccdcd2e4170fa4e764d4cbe3f_1568302845831_tether%20gas.png)
While some have been voicing concerns about the Ethereum network’s congestion and scalability issues in light of ERC-20 Tether’s growth, it’s also worth looking at the situation from a different angle. People are now proving to be willing to pay good money to interact with the Ethereum network, which is a particularly strong validation for the growing field of DeFi apps and projects building on Ethereum.
Thanks for reading!
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