Wormhole integrates native USDC transfers for four blockchain networks
Wormhole has integrated Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), allowing USD Coin (USDC) to be transferred between Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Optimism via Wormhole-based bridges, according to a Sept. 20 announcement.
The new feature is available to end-users via the Portal bridge, and developers can integrate it into their own apps using Wormhole Connect.
The Wormhole team claimed that the new integration will reduce liquidity issues and user confusion. “On these new and emerging chains, multiple versions of these bridged USDC tokens can exist,” it stated, “which can lead to fragmented liquidity, poor pricing, and a confusing experience for users and developers alike.” CCTP will help fix this problem by “creating a natively cross-chain USDC that can be burned and minted across connected chains,” it stated.
When Circle first issued USDC, it was only available on Ethereum. If a user wanted to transfer USDC to another chain, they needed to use a bridge to lock up their native USDC on Ethereum and mint a derivative version on the other chain. However, multiple bridging protocols with various derivative versions of USDC could sometimes cause confusion among end-users.
In 2021, Circle launched its stablecoin on a second chain, Stellar. It continued to launch on additional chains afterward, bringing the number of compatible networks to 14 as of Sept. 20.
But for a user to transfer native USDC from one network to another, they still needed to deposit their coins to a Circle partner’s account and then withdraw them to another network using that account. Partially because of this complexity, many users continued to use bridged versions of the coin instead of its native version.
Related: Stablecoin depegging plagued USDC
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