To give USD Coin (USDC) customers time to prepare, we wanted to announce that we’ll be supporting the Ethereum Constantinople and St. Petersburg upgrade occurring at block height 7,280,000 on February 28, 2019 (approximately 19:00 UTC).
Until the network stabilizes, minimum block confirmations for USDC token deposits and withdrawals will be temporarily increased to 300 blocks. Your funds are safe and there is no action you need to take at this time. USDC is an ERC-20 token used on Ethereum.
Constantinople and St. Petersburg are hard forks, meaning the changes result in new rules to Ethereum that aren’t compatible with prior versions. These changes are intended to fix security vulnerabilities and optimize Ethereum.
If you have any more questions, please reach out to our support team here. You can learn more about USDC here, and tokenize or redeem USDC with both Circle and Coinbase. You can go here to read the monthly reports on US dollar reserves backing USDC issued by independent accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP.