USDC multichain capability will allow the speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of the next-gen public chains.
The Centre consortium announced on Tuesday that members will be able to issue the USDC stablecoin on ten more blockchain platforms. According to the USDC’s administrator, USDC will become available on Avalanche, Celo, Flow, Hedera, Kava, Nervo, Polkadot, Stacks, Tezos, and Tron in the next couple of months.
USDC was initially launched on Ethereum in 2018 and was fully implemented on the Algorand, Stellar, and Solana chains in late 2020. Expanding its multi-chain feature is in line with the Centre’s vision to support stablecoin on several blockchain platforms. With this, USDC’s expansion will have surpassed that of Tether’s USDT, which is currently native to eight blockchains. USDC however, still has a market cap of $25 billion, while USDT continues to lead with $63 billion.
USDC multichain capability will allow the speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of the next-gen public chains. Moreover, it will facilitate the growth of the Internet of Value, and “drive individual and enterprise adoption of open blockchain technologies.” Furthermore, it will intensify network effects and allow wide interoperability in payment infrastructures.
To achieve this milestone, Centre which is run by Coinbase crypto exchange and Circle payments firm, collaborated with project teams. The administrator also liked the communities underpinning the above blockchain platforms. Each of these brought unique capabilities and technology, enabling value exchange between people and enterprises at the internet’s speed.
“We anticipate that USDC on these blockchain platforms and multichain protocols will further accelerate the use of the world’s fastest-growing digital dollar currency,” Centre stated in the announcement.
USDC to Debut on More Blockchain Platforms
Expanding to more blockchain platforms became more possible following two sets of announcements depicting USDC as an attractive savings vehicle. In the first, Compound Labs launched a USDC savings product – ‘Treasury’ for fintech and new banks. Through the product, firms earn a 4% APY interest rate – higher than what they would accrue from a savings account.
In the second, Coinbase launched a similar savings product to its retail users with the same interest rate. A senior product manager at Coinbase, Thorsten Jaeckel, said yields would come from lending out USDC to “verified borrowers”. Moreover, Circle announced its yield and DeFi API products last week.
The blockchain expansion comes even though stablecoins have fallen into the regulators’ radar. Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, particularly mentioned USDT and even the relatively unknown TITAN while discussing emerging systemic risks. Fed Vice Chair Randal Quarles, expressed more optimism on stablecoins than most of his colleagues.
In the announcement, the Centre stated that they “look forward to providing further updates on the timing of the integration of USDC on each of these blockchain platforms in the coming days and over the balance of the year.”
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