A dollar-backed stablecoin is being used by Bolivia’s VIVA to manage its reserves and settle transactions, and the company has done so without swapping out its current telecom systems. The carrier sits at the head of a new Avalanche-based network called Iris, which is being constructed specifically for telecom firms.
What VIVA Is Actually Doing
VIVA is the first carrier live on Iris, having operated in Bolivia for more than 25 years before expanding into Mexico. The company is settling transactions with USDi, a dollar-backed stablecoin from Agora, and holding eligible operating reserves in dollars rather than local currency.
Jules Miller, the CEO of Iris and a former partner at IBM Blockchain Ventures who helped found that company’s blockchain unit, says the setup keeps VIVA’s identity, billing and distribution systems operating just as they are while adding financial services built on top of them.
“Iris is the financial network for telecom operators,” Miller told CoinDesk. Carriers can plug their identity, billing and distribution systems into the network, activate different services and settle activity in U.S. dollars without replacing their core infrastructure.
Why This Matters for VIVA
The VIVA chief executive described the decision as a means of prolonging the usefulness of an earlier investment in upgrading the company’s network infrastructure.
“We’ve invested heavily in modernizing our network and bringing our customers into the digital economy,” Alvarez said in a statement. “Iris lets us earn new revenue on that investment and grow into a platform, without replacing the systems our business already runs on.”
The Network’s Early Markets
Iris is starting in emerging markets, where mobile operators often play a much bigger role in consumers’ financial lives than they do in the U.S., according to John Nahas, Ava Labs’ chief business officer.
- In the U.S., the operator is like one rail among many.
- In markets such as Bolivia, the mobile carrier is often the rail that people do everything on.
Nahas explained that Iris’s early growth will center on Latin America and could extend into parts of Africa and Asia instead of the U.S. The rollout comes after other companies began using Avalanche, such as South Korean trading firm POSCO, which brought trade receivables onto the network, and automaker Hyundai, which moved an internal remittance system built around a stablecoin and U.S. dollars and USDT.
The Numbers Behind the Bet
According to McKinsey figures cited by Iris, between 2012 and 2025, global mobile data traffic grew more than 50% annually, while operator service revenue increased less than 1% per year. That difference is the issue Iris is attempting to resolve.
VIVA uses a super-app product that helped cut churn among prepaid mobile customers by 33%, according to Nahas, while raising their lifetime value by 35%.
He added that Iris now needs more real-world case studies, saying “When you start to see numbers like this, it just starts making a lot of sense,”.
| Market | Role of Mobile Carrier | Iris Focus |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. | One rail among many | Broad financial services |
| Bolivia and other emerging markets | Often the rail people do everything on | Settlement, dollar reserves, new services |
Beyond VIVA, the Iris team is reaching further, and the Balesia Group, which runs telecom operations throughout the Americas through its family office, has already pledged $43 million toward the effort.
The network is still speaking with further telecom operators across the globe as it searches for more carriers and services, Miller stated.
What remains to be seen is whether carriers can retain more of the economic gains they have built up over decades, without having to start over entirely. The results from VIVA’s use of Iris serve as the first evidence of how that might work.
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