Tether (USDT) ERC-20 Transactions At ATH, Take Up 25% Of Ethereum’s Network

USDT transactions on the Ethereum network are increasing steadily. However, the network is close to reaching its maximum capacity and as Tether continues to print more stable coins, there’s less and less room for developers of decentralized applications (DApps). This brings up the scalability issues of Ethereum and it makes finding a solution even more urgent. 

USDT ERC-20 Transactions Take Up 25% Of Ethereum’s Network

Data from Etherscan reveals that on September 6th, the Ethereum network processed a total of 768,500 transactions. 

On the same day, there were 185,255 USDT ERC-20 transactions carried on the network. This is almost 25% of all the transactions for that day. 

ERC20 USDT Transactions. Source: Etherscan.io

Now, according to Tether’s transparency page, there’s around $1.5 billion worth of USDT which circulates on the network of Ethereum. This represents a total of about 40% of Tether’s entire circulating supply. 

As seen on the chart above, the total transaction count of USDT actually reached its all-time high on September 6th and it appears that it’s in an increasing trend as it keeps on going up during the past couple of weeks. 

Is It Becoming a Problem?

Data reveals that the Ethereum network is currently operating at 94.74% capacity. In other words, there’s almost no room left. 

Evidently, one of the major consumers is Tether and its stable coin USDT. As the company continues to print more and more of it, the amount which circulates on Ethereum’s network is probably going to grow as well. 

The more this continues, the less space there will be available for developers of decentralized apps to use. Given that this is Ethereum’s main intention, one can easily see how this is becoming a problem.

As Cryptopotato reported, there are a couple of solutions already in the making, namely Sharding and Plasma, but it remains unclear when we can expect their actual implementation.