Circle rolls out native USDC tokens on Polygon

Stablecoin issuer Circle has announced it has begun minting USD Coin (USDC) natively on the Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol Polygon.

USDC is accessible to users and developers without bridging the stablecoin from Ethereum to another blockchain. Circle Mint and Circle’s developer application programming interfaces (APIs) now support Polygon-based USDC, tapping into Polygon’s scaling capabilities.

1/ It’s official. #ItsStillStableSeptember and $USDC is now available natively on @0xPolygon PoS mainnet!

Learn the benefits of native USDC and how to switch from bridged USDC.e https://t.co/KcK55sT4KH pic.twitter.com/Gm6HjR62KW

— Circle (@circle) October 10, 2023

According to the announcement from Circle, businesses and developers will be able to build decentralized applications with USDC on Polygon. The new offering is touted to enable near-instant, low-fee transactions for various use cases, including payments, remittances, trading, borrowing and lending.

Before Circle announced its native Polygon USDC offering, protocol users had to use bridged USDC (USDC.e) from the Ethereum blockchain. The token is not issued by Circle, unlike the new offering, which will be redeemable at a 1:1 ratio for United States dollars.

Circle had previously provided support of deposits and withdrawals for USDC.e on Polygon for Circle Mint and its APIs. The issuer plans to discontinue this service from Nov. 10, warning users who attempt to send USDC.e to Circle Mint accounts that their assets may be unrecoverable after this date.

The new Polygon USDC token address reflects a current market capitalization of some 4.3 million USDC on the scaling protocol. Source: Polygonscan

Circle also notes that the provision of native Polygon USDC will enable low-cost global payments and remittances, as well as accessibility to trading, borrowing and lending on leading decentralized finance protocols, including Aave, Compound, Curve, Uniswap and QuickSwap.

The USDC issuer also plans to launch a cross-chain transfer protocol to Polygon to enable interoperability with other blockchain networks. This is set to unlock Polygon-based USDC transfers to and from the Ethereum blockchain.

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