Wyoming Pilots First State-Issued Stablecoin on Hashfire for Payments

Traditionally, state vendor payments have moved at a snail’s pace, taking days or weeks via conventional banking systems. Wyoming’s pilot seeks to radically compress that timeline: payments using the state-issued digital token reportedly now complete in seconds, eliminating banking delays and cut­ting administrative friction.

Hashfire, an Avalanche-based programmable agreements engine, enables the state to automate contract fulfillment, triggering treasury transfers in real time. As outlined in state commission reports, this infrastructure allows Wyoming agencies to execute payments immediately upon approval, rather than waiting for ACH or wire batch windows

This token, dubbed WYST (Wyoming Stable Token), is not a speculative asset. Every unit is fully backed by U.S. dollars, short-term Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements, complying with a requirement for over‑collateralization to maintain the 1:1 peg. Under the state's Stable Token Act (Senate Enrolled Act 85), the Wyoming Stable Token Commission was created to oversee issuance and to safeguard complete reserves.

Importantly, all earnings from interest on these reserves will benefit Wyoming’s public school system via the School Foundation Fund, redirecting profits from a public digital asset back into education.

From the outset, WYST has been engineered for interoperability. Developed in partnership with LayerZero Labs, renowned for its Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard, the system supports cross‑chain operations on networks including Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Base, and Avalanche. Demonstrations highlighted moving value seamlessly between Ethereum and Avalanche via Stargate bridges.

The pilot on Hashfire targets Avalanche’s sub-second finality to showcase fast vendor payouts. Future plans, including support for Solana and Aptos, are reportedly already underway.

Wyoming’s experiment is groundbreaking: if it succeeds, it could become the first state-issued, fully-reserved stablecoin in the U.S. seamlessly integrated into government payments, ushering in a new era in public treasury management.

Similar private stablecoins like USDC and USDT have revolutionized digital commerce, but Wyoming is charting a different path, securing public governance of the token, transparency through on‑chain auditability, and civic reinvestment of earnings.

In March, Governor Mark Gordon emphasized this public‑sector focus at the DC Blockchain Summit, noting that Wyoming aims to serve as a model for innovation and financial modernization.

Key to WYST’s credibility are rigorous controls: only fully-reserved assets are accepted, and the token undergoes extensive "alpha" stress testing in controlled environments using valueless test tokens. Participation in early tests has been limited to experienced blockchain users to ensure resilience before broader adoption.

The state has also implemented anti‑money‑laundering provisions and compliance measures to prevent misuse by illicit actors, while advocating for privacy-preserving structures to protect legitimate users.

Scaling to additional networks like Solana and Aptos could unlock broader use cases, such as peer-to-peer payments, DeFi integration, and programmable on-chain contracts, thanks to these chains’ speed and efficiency. Meanwhile, Hashfire supports automation of on-chain contract fulfillment, including receivables financing and public procurement workflows, offering a gateway to innovative lending and supply-chain payment solutions.

Should Wyoming’s pilot prove robust, it may spark a tidal wave of state and federal interest in tokenizing public payments. It’s a potential trailblazer in what could become a nationwide transformation, where digital treasuries process transactions in real time instead of days.

Wyoming is testing the world’s first stablecoin-backed, real-time government payments system via Hashfire on Avalanche. With full fiat backing, public oversight, on‑chain transparency, and civic reinvestment, the pilot may redefine how governments move money and what it means to be a “public bank” in the digital age.