Tether revises wind-down strategy for Omni, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Kusama, EOS, and Algorand

Tether has decided that it will no longer freeze smart contracts on Omni Layer, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Kusama, EOS, and Algorand after receiving feedback from the affected blockchain communities, according to a Friday statement.

The company will discontinue direct issuance and redemption services on the five legacy networks. Users can continue to transfer tokens between wallets on these networks, but the tokens will no longer receive official support like other Tether tokens.

The update modifies Tether’s July 2025 announcement, which planned to completely cease redemptions and freeze USDT tokens on the five blockchains starting September 1, 2025.

“Tether’s decision follows a comprehensive review of blockchain usage data, market demand, and feedback from community stakeholders and infrastructure partners. While these networks played a foundational role in Tether’s early growth, the volume of USDT circulating on them has declined significantly over the past two years,” Tether stated in the July announcement.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said at the time that the company wanted to stay relevant and efficient as the industry continued to change and grow. He noted that ending support for those blockchains would allow Tether to focus its resources on more active, scalable, and widely used networks.

Tether is expanding support for layer 2 networks, including the Lightning Network, and other emerging blockchains offering improved interoperability and speed.

On Thursday, the company said it would launch USDT on the RGB Protocol, enhancing the Bitcoin ecosystem with private, scalable, and flexible smart contracts.

The move, following RGB’s debut on the Bitcoin mainnet, which supports various tokenized assets and leverages the Lightning Network, marks USDT as the first major token to use RGB’s client-side validation for enhanced privacy and efficient transactions.