First Digital Trust, a stablecoin issuer based in Hong Kong, announced its plans to expand the US dollar-pegged FDUSD stablecoin to the Sui (SUI) blockchain. The move comes as part of First Digital’s strategy to increase the usage of FDUSD among decentralized finance (DeFi) users. FDUSD, which is issued in accordance with Hong Kong’s digital asset regulations, maintains its value of $1 by being backed by U.S. Treasury bills and bank deposits.

Since its launch last year, FDUSD has rapidly gained traction and is now the fourth-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, following USDT, USDC and DAI. It currently boasts a market capitalization of $3.3 billion. The token’s popularity has been bolstered by a trading promotion on Binance, a leading cryptocurrency exchange. FDUSD’s trading volume has exceeded $10 billion over the past 24 hours, with the majority of the top trading pairs on Binance, such as BTC/FDUSD and FDUSD/USDT.

Sui, created by the development team previously leading Meta’s Diem crypto project, has experienced significant growth in DeFi activity recently. The network’s total value locked (TVL), a crucial metric in DeFi measuring the combined value of assets on a blockchain or protocol, has surged from $100 million to approximately $700 million in just six months, as reported by DefiLlama.

The expansion to Sui makes FDUSD the first major stablecoin to be natively issued on the network. While Sui currently hosts $340 million worth of USDC and USDT stablecoins, these tokens had to be bridged from other blockchain networks. The integration of FDUSD is expected to enhance liquidity, broaden the network’s utility, and unlock new opportunities for builders and users within the Sui community.