Circle unveils USDC Bridge for native cross-chain stablecoin transfers

The USDC Bridge adds to Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which often sees over $500 million worth of USDC transfers each day.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has launched USDC Bridge, a new user interface built on top of the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) that seeks to simplify native cross-chain transfers of the USDC stablecoin.

On Friday, Circle’s USDC X account said the bridge allows users to move the USDC (USDC) stablecoin in a “predictable, transparent way,” citing a native burn-and-mint transfer mechanism and no bridge complexities.

Gas fees will be handled automatically, fees will be shown upfront, and live status updates will be provided throughout the transfer, Circle added.

The USDC Bridge builds on Circle’s CCTP, which was introduced in April 2023 and facilitates hundreds of millions of stablecoin transfers each day. CCTP eliminated the need for wrapped and synthetic versions of USDC.

Cross-chain bridges seek to make the broader crypto ecosystem interoperable, functioning as a unified network rather than a collection of fragmented, isolated blockchains.

Making bridges as simple and easy to use as possible has been an area of focus for many crypto infrastructure firms. 

In the past, bridges have confused users and arguably slowed crypto adoption, especially for beginners struggling to navigate bridge interfaces, trade routes and gas fees.

Cointelegraph found that USDC Bridge supports USDC transfers between at least 17 Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchains, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Monad, Optimism, Polygon, Sonic and World Network.

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Circle’s CCTP supports a broader number of blockchains, including Solana, Sui and Aptos, which are not natively EVM compatible.

On Wednesday, Circle was hit with a class action for failing to freeze around $230 million worth of USDC that moved through its CCTP from the Drift Protocol exploit on April 1.

Circle is accused of aiding and abetting conversion and negligence. 

More than 100 members are involved in the class action. The law firm representing them, Mira Gibb, is seeking damages, with the final amount to be determined at trial.

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Source: CoinTelegraph