Tether seeks USDT settlement on Bitcoin blockchain BUT we already had OMNI??

[sergiorus]

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/03/12/tether-invests-in-ark-labs-to-make-bitcoin-ready-for-stablecoins-and-payments
What happened to the OMNI tech that was so popular pre-2019?

Why are Tether investing in new 3rd party solutions?

[OmegaStarScream]

It's not the only company they have invested in, I already made a post about this if anyone is interested[1]. They stopped supporting omni layer (among other chains) some time ago[2] probably due to its limitations (especially now, if we're comparing it to RGB and Taproot assets).

Omnichain was never properly adopted though. I was around that time and I don't remember any big exchanges supporting it (maybe except for OKX?) or popular wallets either.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5528322.msg66483903#msg66483903
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2025/07/12/tether-to-halt-usdt-on-omni-bch-kusama-eos-algorand-as-focus-shifts-to-layer-2s

[Charles-Tim]

I did not know the reason Omni layer is no more used. Maybe it is people that are not using it or the exchanges just decided not to continue to accept it because of low usage before tether said they will no more support it.

This project is also different from Omni layer for USDT, it focuses on making bitcoin usable for payments and financial tools that often require faster settlement and automation.

I will say I like the idea if it will be built on bitcoin blockchain.

[tbct_mt2]

Omnichain was never properly adopted though. I was around that time and I don't remember any big exchanges supporting it (maybe except for OKX?) or popular wallets either.

I was around that time when Poloniex supported USDT on OMNI layer before its leading position in cryptocurrency exchange market was taken over by Bittrex, then Binance. I don't remember Bittrex and Binance supported USDT on OMNI back then but very likely they did.

Poloniex supported USDT on the Omni Layer (Bitcoin network) from roughly the inception of USDT trading on their platform (around 2014–2015) until April 30, 2021.

Poloniex announced to delist USDT-OMNI on April 27, 2021.
https://support.poloniex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040013653-Delisted-Assets#

April 27, 2021 Announcement

April 30 at 17:00 UTC: Deposits of USDT OMNI disabled.

Why 2021 year? It was the year when transaction fees on Bitcoin blockchain and OMNI layer was expensive - with fee rates sometimes spike to 100-200+sat/vbyte -  so it lost competitiveness with other chains like Tron.
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),all,weight

[sergiorus]

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5528322.msg66483903#msg66483903

thanks, that's interesting.
i assume those projects will allow settlement of other stablecoins and possibly tokenised securities/RWAs on the Bitcoin blockchain as well?
i noticed valuations of most Layer 1s and 2s have been taking brutal beatings lately, is the market realising the only reason they even got to exist wasn't a proper Bitcoin settlement layer at the time after Omni shuttdown + Ethereum fees became too high and now everything must go back to the most secure layer aka Bitcoin?

I don't remember any big exchanges supporting it (maybe except for OKX?) or popular wallets either.

I think every single big exchange supported USDT on OMNI back then, however there indeed was a lack of OMNI wallets (if there even were any?) and the only way to hold USDT outside exchanges was via holding it on your normal Bitcoin cold wallet but that was quite a complicated and not user-friendly process at all.

[OmegaStarScream]

thanks, that's interesting.
i assume those projects will allow settlement of other stablecoins and possibly tokenised securities/RWAs on the Bitcoin blockchain as well?
i noticed valuations of most Layer 1s and 2s have been taking brutal beatings lately, is the market realising the only reason they even got to exist wasn't a proper Bitcoin settlement layer at the time after Omni shuttdown + Ethereum fees became too high and now everything must go back to the most secure layer aka Bitcoin?

Yes, the whole idea about RGB and Taproot assets is to bring smart contracts to Bitcoin so yes, I would not rule out RWAs and tokenized securities. Ark labs product seem a bit different, and is mainly about stablecoins.

As for the "why" then that's one way to see it for sure. Tether definitely seem to be investing a lot into Bitcoin. By buying it, releasing their open source MiningOS for miners (of all scales), and backing multiple L2 and Bitcoin scaling solutions. USDC? not so much.

[buwaytress]

Actually thought they stopped using Bitcoin network because of a perceived lack of usage, rather than just a lack of belief in OMNI. Not going to bother reading about why they're looking for a return, but if I were to speculate based on little but what I can observe, it has something to do with USDC moving into their territory on all those L2s... and a disappointing development performance of said Ls (look at Polygon now, for example).

[dkbit98]

Why are Tether investing in new 3rd party solutions?

Tether only cares about making profit, they don't care on what network that is, and they certainly don't care about Bitcoin.
I don't know if they heard Vitalik Buterin who said recently that it became pointless to have so many layers and chains on ethereum... and I would add that most chains are useless.
We also don't need a bunch of layers on top of bitcoin, except if they could provide some value with adding privacy.
More information about Bitcoin ''layers'':
https://www.bitcoinlayers.org/

[d5000]

I think this is a quite interesting announcement. Ark (the technology the Arkade system is based on) seems to me a game changer when it comes to scalability, because it shares the instant settlement of Lightning without its limitations regarding liquidity and onboarding (Ark doesn't need a channel/transaction per person). If Google Gemini is correct, then Ark could onboard 40,000 users per block or 2,1 billion per year, which is much more than Lightning. It has a centralized component but is still trust-minimized, making it an interesting tradeoff for small and medium amounts of BTC.

Tether adopting that tech could actually bring it to the mainstream and that would be huge.

We also don't need a bunch of layers on top of bitcoin, except if they could provide some value with adding privacy.

We do need if we want 1) mass adoption and 2) people actually to respect the NYKNYC principle (and not trusting centralized wallets or exchanges).

Currently Bitcoin's capacity looks fine because still a large proportion of users hold their funds on CEX, and on chain activity for payments is low. That can change very fastly, as late 2017 and 2023/24 showed us.

[sergiorus]

I think this is a quite interesting announcement. Ark (the technology the Arkade system is based on) seems to me a game changer when it comes to scalability, because it shares the instant settlement of Lightning without its limitations regarding liquidity and onboarding (Ark doesn't need a channel/transaction per person). If Google Gemini is correct, then Ark could onboard 40,000 users per block or 2,1 billion per year, which is much more than Lightning. It has a centralized component but is still trust-minimized, making it an interesting tradeoff for small and medium amounts of BTC.

Tether adopting that tech could actually bring it to the mainstream and that would be huge.

We also don't need a bunch of layers on top of bitcoin, except if they could provide some value with adding privacy.

We do need if we want 1) mass adoption and 2) people actually to respect the NYKNYC principle (and not trusting centralized wallets or exchanges).

Currently Bitcoin's capacity looks fine because still a large proportion of users hold their funds on CEX, and on chain activity for payments is low. That can change very fastly, as late 2017 and 2023/24 showed us.

yea when i first read about it i was like ''wtf what took you guys so long, you already had OMNI since many years ago" but apparently OMNI tech was just not scalable at all so it would not satisfy the needs of actual stablecoin adoption.

and as per the ''what took you so long'' part.... i believe the work on stablecoin settlement on Bitcoin's layer should have started years ago indeed. my wild guess is that Tether were conspired or lobbied by venture capital firms to assist in milking the L1 and L2 narrative.
simply from the security POV, all those Layer 1 and 2 chains were always a dead weight. but there was a lot of money in it so the big boys got a few years to play around, pumping their TVLs with those stablecoins and as a result, pumping their native tokens.

now that the narrative is milked dry, the TVLs vanished and the security flaws are exposed (as well as insane centralisation, which was never a secret though), the money goes where the real tech, security and adoption potential is, aka Bitcoin.

[Yamane_Keto]

I think this is a quite interesting announcement. Ark (the technology the Arkade system is based on) seems to me a game changer when it comes to scalability, because it shares the instant settlement of Lightning without its limitations regarding liquidity and onboarding (Ark doesn't need a channel/transaction per person).

The game changer has become faster in terms of confirmations compared to fees. In recent weeks, Bitcoin payments have been processed with fees of less than $1, but the 10-minute wait makes them impractical for everyday transactions. Fees are no longer an issue on most blockchains, and since we cannot exceed the 10-minute average limit, Ark or Lightning support will be essential.

[NotATether]

The game changer has become faster in terms of confirmations compared to fees. In recent weeks, Bitcoin payments have been processed with fees of less than $1, but the 10-minute wait makes them impractical for everyday transactions. Fees are no longer an issue on most blockchains, and since we cannot exceed the 10-minute average limit, Ark or Lightning support will be essential.

BTW, has anyone ever made a wallet for Ark? Besides that reference implementation that lives on Github with the daemon. Any 3rd party software as of now that can do this?

[bitmover]

I did not know the reason Omni layer is no more used. Maybe it is people that are not using it or the exchanges just decided not to continue to accept it because of low usage before tether said they will no more support it.

This project is also different from Omni layer for USDT, it focuses on making bitcoin usable for payments and financial tools that often require faster settlement and automation.

I will say I like the idea if it will be built on bitcoin blockchain.

OMNI was where basically 100% of the USDT was issued in 2017.

Unfortunately, bitcoin fees were too volatile and it migrated to other chains, mainly Ethereum ERC-20 and recently Tron.
Now OMNI is dead and there are zero transactions for days (https://omniexplorer.info/)

This is the current situation of USDT.

If you take a look closely, you will see there are still some USDT issued on BTC L2 Liquid network.



https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=usdt


One interesting point: There is literally zero USDT in BNB chain.So, all USDT in BSC are not issued by tether, but issued by Binance as a "pegged USDT".

[sergiorus]

One interesting point: There is literally zero USDT in BNB chain.So, all USDT in BSC are not issued by tether, but issued by Binance as a "pegged USDT".

yep, same is true for all L2s and many L1s, they all have USDT but it's usually bridged sometimes canonically sometimes not.

USDC afaik forced chains to mark non-native USDC as smth like "bridgedUSDC", "axlUSDC" (as bridged via Axelar) and so on.

imho the signal is clear neither Tether nor Circle will ever deal with most of those "chains" and seems like slowly halting their operations on most currently supported chains as well.

not long until it's just Bitcoin's settlement, Ethereum and maybe Tron left for the main stablecoins.

[d5000]

BTW, has anyone ever made a wallet for Ark? Besides that reference implementation that lives on Github with the daemon. Any 3rd party software as of now that can do this?

For now I've found the following ones:

- Arkade Metamask - that's the exact technology Tether aims to use, afaik. It's an addition to Metamask, so it potentially could reach a huge user base.
- Bark - Implementation in Rust (don't know if that's the reference implementation you mentioned?)
- Arkaic Wallet - mobile / web app (documentation in Italian)