Circle launches USDC on Arbitrum network

Circle, a member of the Centre consortium, planned to launch the stablecoin USDC on the Layer-2 network Arbitrum on June 8.

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Circle announced that it will start launching native USDC on Arbitrum on June 8 to replace the previous bridge version of USDC from Ethereum. Currently Circle has launched nativeUSDC on Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, TRON, Algorand, Stellar, Flow, and Hedera.…

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 1, 2023

The solution will replace the currently used Ethereum-Arbitrum bridge.

It is expected that, over time, the «official» USDC will, in liquidity terms, displace its версию с блокировкой токенов on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization network.

To eliminate confusion, the “bridge” variant will be renamed to USDC.e.

With the assistance of Arbitrium Foundation, updates to the ecosystem’s application interfaces will be carried out.

No immediate changes to Arbitrum Bridge will occur. The bridge will continue operating as usual.

The native Arbitrum USDC token will offer several advantages:

• full fiat backing and Circle’s 1:1 USD redemption commitment;
• fiat-to-crypto gateways for institutional investors through the company and partners;
• upcoming support for the protocol CCTP to move stablecoins across blockchains to improve user experience.

«Transfers will take only a few minutes — no more delays in withdrawals», the Arbitrum Foundation said.

Currently, CCTP is implemented for Ethereum and Avalanche.

On a transfer request, the protocol burns the amount of USDC specified by the user on the source network and mints an equivalent amount of tokens for the user’s wallet on the destination blockchain.

Circle releases the stablecoin across several networks, including Algorand, Avalanche, Hedera, Solana, Cosmos. The company plans to integrate at least part of them into CCTP during 2023.

In January, the company published its first annual report on the state and prospects of the USDC economy.