Stablecoin issuer Circle announced on April 26 the mainnet launch of its cross-chain transfer protocol with support for two blockchains.
Circle launches CCTP
The product, called Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), allows developers to easily move the USDC stablecoin between Ethereum and Avalanche.
Circle’s Product VP, Joao Reginatto, said in a blog post:
“Developers can now build applications with seamless support for different native versions of USDC, allowing businesses to target end-users in different blockchain ecosystems.”
In a separate press release, Circle said that apps that use CCTP will allow users to “burn and mint” or “teleport” USDC between blockchains. This removes the need for the older method of cross-chain transfers, which involves locking and minting assets.
Ultimately, customers should be able to transact with USDC without needing to know which blockchain their assets exist on, Circle said.
More than ten apps have reportedly adopted CCTP to date, including the popular Ethereum wallet Metamask and the Solana bridge Wormhole.
Though CCTP is only available on two blockchains at present, Circle said that it will make the product available on various other chains throughout 2023.
USDC is already available on Ethereum, Avalanche, Stellar, TRON, Solana, Hedera Hashgraph, Algorand, and Polygon. As such, CCTP will allow USDC to move across those various blockchains easily; it will not introduce multi-chain support altogether.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin
USDC is currently the second largest stablecoin after Tether (USDT), reporting a market cap of $30 billion.
The asset briefly lost its peg with the U.S. dollar in early March around the time that Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Circle stored about $3.3 billion of USDC backing with Silicon Valley Bank, and it was initially uncertain whether the firm could access those funds.
However, Circle soon accessed the funds in question. USDC quickly regained its intended $1.00 price peg, which it still maintains today.
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