Centre Endorses Second Chain Bringing Major Scalability & Performance Improvements to Digital Dollar Stablecoins for Global Consumer Payment Adoption
Now available to customers of Circle’s family of platform services, including Circle Payments, Wallets, Marketplaces and Business Account APIs.
Earlier this summer, Circle announced a partnership with the Algorand Foundation for the development of a version of USDC for the Algorand Blockchain. This project was part of the broader effort from Centre Consortium for the development of Multichain USDC, bringing the world’s leading digital dollar stablecoin to innovative blockchain platforms, and ensuring open and interoperable standards for digital dollars on the internet.
Today, in conjunction with the Centre Consortium announcement of Algorand becoming an Official Chain for USDC, Circle is rolling out broad support for USDC on Algorand, available to developers through Circle APIs. The Algorand implementation of USDC enables on-chain transactions that provide nearly instant settlement finality (5 seconds), transaction throughput approaching 1000 tps and current average transaction fees of approximately 1/20th of a cent (USD). The mainnet contract for USDC on Algorand is also available online for any developer to interact with.
As part of the launch, developers can now also nearly instantly swap USDC across Ethereum and Algorand using public APIs that enable cross-chain transfers. Wallet developers and exchanges who wish to support this new implementation of USDC can sign-up for a developer account and become eligible to use the new token swap service at no cost. Circle will be rolling out an Authorized Developer program in the near future for access to the new token swap service.
USDC for Algorand is now woven into Circle’s full suite of platform services and APIs, including Circle Payments, Wallets, Marketplaces and Business Account APIs. Developers leveraging Algorand for payments, commerce and financial applications now have access to powerful APIs for connecting to banks and cards, storing and managing digital currency wallets, and building custom financial applications.
At a time when public chains are gaining more traction for payments and finance, the scalability, performance and efficiency demands are increasing exponentially. Increasing scalability and lowering costs are a critical and immediate need in blockchain-based payments. We are excited to spearhead the introduction of capabilities that are designed for this next phase of growth, while also ensuring deep interoperability across leading blockchains.
On September 8, 2020, USDC hit the 1.8 BILLION mark — an incredible 340% growth YTD. USDC's rapid climb, fueled by sharp global economic forces and coupled with the demand for global & instant settlement ⚡has cemented USDC as a new market infrastructure and rail.
