Lugano to accept Bitcoin and Tether

Polygon (MATIC/USD) and stablecoin Tether are supporting Swiss city Lugano’s aims to become the blockchain capital of Europe. People can pay parking tickets, taxes, tuition fees and utility costs in Bitcoin (BTC/USD), Tether and LVGA, Lugano’s stablecoin, Invezz learned from a press release.

Lugano Mayor Michele Foletti and Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino made the announcement live.

Stablecoins will run on Polygon   

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Lugano will be aided by Polygon, whose blockchain will support the stablecoins. Polygon is one the fastest growing blockchains with low gas fees and high speed. It runs in parallel with Ethereum (ETH/USD) network to promote infrastructure development and improve functionality.

Lugano launched a loyalty program and digital wallet

Over the past year, Lugano has taken measures to realize its plans, such as launching a loyalty program for LVGA points and a digital wallet. It also created the blockchain 3Achain, which is EVM-compatible and uses Proof of Authority consensus.

CHF 100M fund incentivizes start-ups  

Lugano also plans to set up a 100 million Swiss francs ($109 million) fund to support blockchain-based start-ups. It will create specialized start-ups and hub hosting companies and invest another 3 million francs to accelerate crypto adoption by local businesses.

Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon, said:

Combining the stability of stablecoin technology with Polygon’s low-cost infrastructure provides Lugano with a rapid, and non-volatile means of transacting. We’re delighted the City of Lugano has selected Polygon to provide this critical infrastructure for their stablecoin.

OpenSea and Aave are among Polygon dApps  

Among the dApps Polygon has attracted are Sushiswap (SUSHI/USD), OpenSea, Aave (AAVE/USD), and Mark Cuban’s NFT platform Lazy.com. Polygon’s team is working on scaling solutions such as Polygon Edge, PoS and Avail. The ecosystem is investing in the latest zero-knowledge technology, which will play a critical role in onboarding Ethereum’s next billion users.

About Polygon

Polygon’s growing suite of products offers developers easy access to prominent scaling and infrastructure solutions like sidechains, ZK and Optimistic rollups, stand-alone and enterprise chains, hybrid solutions, and data availability solutions.  

The protocol’s scaling solutions host more than 7,000 applications and 100 million unique user addresses. They secure assets worth over $5 billion.