The Circle Pressroom

Press Release
October 13, 2022

Circle Announces Next Wave of USDC Support for Multi-chain Ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO — September 28, 2022 — On stage at Converge22 today, Circle Internet Financial, a global digital financial technology firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC), announced the intent to make USDC available on five additional blockchain ecosystems including - Arbitrum, Cosmos, NEAR, Optimism and Polkadot.

By the end of 2022, USDC intends to be available natively on Arbitrum One, NEAR, Optimism and Polkadot. USDC on Cosmos intends to go live in early 2023. 

“The multi-chain expansion is intended to increase USDC’s native availability from eight ecosystems to thirteen, and enables blockchain developers building on USDC and their users to experience greater liquidity and interoperability within the crypto economy,” said Joao Reginatto, VP of Product at Circle. “Extending multi-chain support for USDC opens the door for institutions, exchanges, developers and more to innovate and have easier access to a trusted and stable digital dollar.” 

Supporting Blockchains

  • Arbitrum One, a Layer 2 (L2) secure scaling solution for Ethereum, developed by Offchain Labs, instantly scales decentralized apps, reducing costs and increasing capacity, without sacrificing Ethereum’s security. Arbitrum One utilizes Optimistic Rollup technology which will help enable even faster and cheaper transactions using USDC in the post-Merge Ethereum Proof-of-Stake world. 

  • Cosmos is an ever-expanding ecosystem of interconnected apps and services, built for a decentralized future. Circle intends to make USDC accessible to all developers and users via a neutral asset issuance chain and through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, which currently enables 49 blockchains to transfer digital assets between one another. Circle is also in discussions with the Cosmos ecosystem to leverage Interchain Security, which plans to be publicly available in early 2023, to benefit from the security of the validators supporting the Cosmos Hub. 

  • NEAR is a high-performance blockchain and dApp development platform that features frictionless user onboarding and a unique scaling solution built on sharding technology that can deliver high-speed and low-cost USDC transactions that can settle in seconds. Bringing USDC to NEAR will help empower developers to integrate stablecoin payments flows into Javascript or Rust-based decentralized applications, unlocking a new wave of accessibility for Web 2.0 builders moving into Web3.

  • Optimism is a fast, secure, and scalable L2 blockchain built by Ethereum developers, for Ethereum developers. Optimism utilizes Optimistic Rollup technology to scale the Ethereum PoS network and improve transaction throughput – which will result in significantly faster and lower cost USDC transactions. 

  • Polkadot is a scalable platform for Web3 that facilitates an internet where independent blockchains and their applications can exchange information and transactions in a trustless way via the Polkadot Relay Chain. Circle intends to bring USDC to the Polkadot ecosystem via the Statemint parachain to benefit from the shared security model of Polkadot, while enabling the proliferation of USDC throughout the independently governed ecosystem of parachains. 

In addition to integrating with these upcoming blockchains, Circle already supports USDC natively across Algorand, Avalanche, Ethereum, Flow, Hedera, Solana, Stellar and TRON.

Developers can begin scoping their future integrations with USDC and testing with Circle APIs via Circle’s documentation portal. Open discussion and product AMAs are available at Circle’s all-new Discord channel.

Businesses can learn more about USDC and sign up for a Circle Account today.