Aptos (APT-USD) is joining forces with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLFI) to bring the USD1 stablecoin onto its network. The move sets up a battle with Tron (TRX-USD) and Ethereum (ETH-USD) for dominance in the fast-growing stablecoin market.
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Aptos CEO Avery Ching said the collaboration has been in the works for months, with WLFI choosing Aptos as its launch partner due to the network’s speed and low costs. “They view us as some of the best tech partners they could work with,” Ching told Cointelegraph at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore.
USD1 is set to launch on October 6 with immediate ecosystem support, including liquidity pools across top Aptos DeFi protocols such as Echelon, Hyperion, Thala, and Tapp. Major wallets and exchanges like OKX, Petra, Backpack, and Gate Wallet will also support the rollout.
Aptos Targets Tron’s Market Share
Ching made it clear that Aptos is aiming directly at Tron’s dominance in the stablecoin sector. Tron currently hosts about $78.6 billion worth of Tether (USDT-USD), while Ethereum leads with nearly $95 billion. Aptos, by comparison, has only $1.3 billion in USDT.
But Aptos believes its speed and cost advantages can help it carve out market share. Transactions on Aptos cost less than a hundredth of a cent and confirm in under half a second, Ching said.
The USD1 token already has a market cap of $2.68 billion, most of it on the BNB Chain, according to DefiLlama. With WLFI’s backing and Aptos’ infrastructure, the team expects USD1 adoption to accelerate.
Building Out the Aptos Ecosystem
Aptos currently supports several major stablecoins, including USDT (USDT-USD), USDC (USDC-USD), PayPal (PYPL) USD, and Ethena USD, with over $60 billion in monthly transaction volume. Still, its overall share of the stablecoin market is small at just 0.35%, according to RWA.xyz.
To change that, Ching revealed two new projects. The first is Decibel, a decentralized exchange optimized for stablecoin and perpetuals trading, with a testnet set for October and a mainnet launch later this year. The second is Shelby, a decentralized storage solution designed for social media apps and training data, developed in partnership with Jump Crypto and expected to launch in 2026.
WLFI Brings Political Influence
The WLFI connection brings added visibility to Aptos. Led by members of the Trump family, the project aims to create a retail and banking-focused DeFi ecosystem. The partnership shows that WLFI is betting on Aptos’ infrastructure to support its plan to distribute yield from stablecoins “back to the people,” as Ching put it.
Aptos, founded by ex-Meta (META) engineers including Ching, has heavyweight backers of its own, with support from firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Circle Ventures, Franklin Templeton (BEN), and Apollo (APO).
At the time of writing, Aptos is sitting at $4.55.
