Circle Internet Financial, the creator of the second largest stablecoin, USD coin (USDC), announced on Wednesday that USDC would soon be available on five additional blockchains in an effort to strengthen its market position and broaden accessibility across multiple chains.
Nikhil Chandhok, the company’s chief product officer, informed a live audience at Circle’s Converge22 conference today that USDC will be compatible with Arbitrum, Cosmos, NEAR, Optimism, and Polkadot by the beginning of next year.
“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,” Circle’s V.P. of Product Joao Reginatto said in a statement. “The multi-chain expansion is intended to increase USDC’s native availability from eight ecosystems to thirteen,” he added.
Circle also unveiled Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, a tool designed to enhance USDC transactions across multiple blockchains.
By the end of the year, the protocol is anticipated to be compatible with Ethereum and Avalanche, with compatibility with other chains following in 2023.
Circle currently supports USDC natively across Algorand, Avalanche, Ethereum, Flow, Hedera, Solana, Stellar, and TRON.
According to the company, USDC will be operating on Arbitrum, NEAR, Optimism, and Polkadot by the end of the year. Cosmos compatibility is expected to launch in early 2023. With today’s announcement, the total number of USDC-compatible blockchains will soon rise to 14.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of a government-backed fiat currency, such as the U.S. dollar. Circle’s advancement comes at a time when competition among stablecoins is heating up. Also, since the Terra debacle, there has been a lot of speculation regarding stablecoins.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin of its kind and is widely used on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Over the last three months, USDC supply has been decreasing. USDC has lost considerable market share recently, and it has shrunk by 12.5% since the beginning of July, from 56 billion USDC to its current level of 49 billion USDC.
