New Crypto Bridge Will Make Tether Transactions Cheaper, CTO Says

Tether's CTO hopes a new EOS-Bitcoin interoperability bridge could one day make tether cheaper and faster because users will be able to make transactions on less-congested blockchains.

Paolo Ardoino, who is also the CTO of Tether's sister company, crypto exchange Bitfinex, told CoinDesk this is part of the reason he has been working with the team behind the token wrapper project, pTokens, to develop an interoperability bridge between the Bitcoin and EOS networks.

An EOS wrapper for a tether ERC20 token is currently being planned, according to pTokens' website.

Founder Thomas Bertani told CoinDesk there were no plans yet to consider developing an EOS wrapper for tether on Omni, a secondary layer on top of the Bitcoin protocol.

One of the initial reasons Tether created an ERC20 version in 2017 was so it could sidestep the congested Bitcoin network.

Many crypto exchanges, including Bitfinex, already offer users two different types of tether, so the ability to swap between protocols already exists in some form.

Ardoino foresees Bitfinex and Tether will continue to perform chain swaps.

Major exchanges looking to swap $10 million worth of tether between two chains will always be able to organize it with them directly, he said.

He added, greater interoperability will allow retail investors with smaller amounts of tether to also shift freely between the different blockchains.

Enhancing interoperability may one day act as the bridge for tether to launch on many other new protocols, he added.