Aptos partners with Trump family’s WLFI to integrate USD1

Layer-1 blockchain Aptos has announced a collaboration with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial to deploy USD1 stablecoins.

Aptos CEO Avery Ching said that they have been in conversation with the Trump-linked DeFi project for a while and “they view us as some of the best tech partners they could work with.”

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the TOKEN 2049 conference in Singapore this week, Ching said that WLFI is working on products for retail, banking and other things for the future. The first step is to get a stablecoin where the yield goes back to the people, he added. 

USD1 will go live on the Aptos Network on Oct. 6 and will have immediate, broad ecosystem support. Liquidity pools and incentives will be live across leading Aptos DeFi protocols, including Echelon, Hyperion, Thala, and Tapp, and wallets and exchanges such as Petra, Backpack, OKX, OneKey, Bitget Wallet, Nightly, and Gate Wallet will also support the launch.

Ching said that World Liberty Finance chose Aptos because it’s “incredibly cheap,” costing “less than a hundredth of a cent” to transact, and it is “way faster than any blockchain out there” with transactions under half a second.

Angling for Tron’s market share

The proof-of-stake layer-1 blockchain aims to compete with Ethereum and Tron for stablecoin deployment. 

Tether (USDT) launched on Aptos at the beginning of the year and has experienced “tremendous growth” in a short period, said Avery, who expects to see exponential growth in the future. 

There is currently $1.3 billion in USDT on Aptos, $78.6 billion on Tron, and the majority, $94.8 billion, on Ethereum, according to Tether. 

The USD1 market capitalization is currently $2.68 billion, and most of this is on the BNB Chain, according to DefiLlama.

Aptos market share grows

Aptos has a long way to go to catch up with industry leaders, possessing a stablecoin market share of around just 0.35%, according to RWA.xyz. However, it already runs Tether (USDT), USDC (USDC), Ethena USD (USDE), and PayPal USD (PYUSD) and transacts more than $60 billion in monthly volume, said Avery. 

Ethereum holds the lion’s share with a 59% total stablecoin market share, which increases to 69% when layer-2 and EVM-compatible networks are included.

New products in the pipeline 

The Aptos CEO also announced “Decibel,” a high-performance, decentralized exchange optimized for stablecoins, perpetual contracts, and spot trading. The testnet is expected in October, with a mainnet launch before the end of the year.

A “hot decentralized storage” system called “Shelby” was also announced. This has been designed in partnership with Jump Crypto for real-time social media apps and training data, with launch expected in 2026.

Avery Ching was the former head of Meta’s “Diem” crypto project before moving to Aptos, which has been backed by venture capital giants such as FTX Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Apollo, Franklin Templeton and Circle Ventures.