Circle launches USDC stablecoin on Polkadot Asset Hub

USD Coin (USDC), the sec­ond-largest sta­ble­coin by mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion after Teth­er (USDT), con­tin­ues expand­ing across dif­fer­ent blockchain net­works, now being launched on Polkadot.

USDC issuer Cir­cle has offi­cial­ly launched USD Coin on the Polka­dot net­work, the firm announced on Sept. 19. Accord­ing to the Circle’s web­site, Polka­dot USDC is imme­di­ate­ly avail­able for devel­op­ers and users as the sta­ble­coin can now be trans­ferred to parachains in Polka­dot via the XCM pro­to­col using Cir­cle Account and Cir­cle APIs.

Accord­ing to the announce­ment, Polka­dot USDC is native­ly issued on Polka­dot Asset Hub, a com­mon parachain that is designed for issu­ing, man­ag­ing, and trans­fer­ring dig­i­tal assets across the Polka­dot ecosystem.

Cir­cle stressed that Cir­cle Account and Cir­cle APIs only sup­port Polka­dot USDC native­ly issued on Polka­dot Asset Hub in the Polka­dot ecosys­tem. This means that users must trans­fer USDC from their Cir­cle Account to an exter­nal Polka­dot Asset Hub wal­let address pri­or to using XCM.

When trans­fer­ring USDC from Polka­dot Asset Hub to oth­er parachains via XCM, users must trans­fer back to Polka­dot Asset Hub via XCM pri­or to deposit­ing into their Cir­cle Account, Cir­cle said, adding:

“Please do not attempt to deposit XCM-trans­ferred USDC from a parachain oth­er than Polka­dot Asset Hub to your Cir­cle Account, as it may not be recov­er­able and could result in a loss of funds.”

Polka­dot sup­port on USDC is yet anoth­er addi­tion to the U.S. dol­lar-pegged sta­ble­coin. With the lat­est addi­tion, USDC now sup­ports a total of 14 var­i­ous blockchain net­works, includ­ing Ethereum, Tron, Stel­lar, Solana and others.

Sim­i­lar­ly to oth­er blockchain inte­gra­tions, the lat­est inte­gra­tion with Polka­dot aims to main­tain Cir­cle as a major inter­op­er­a­ble cryp­tocur­ren­cy as well as sup­port low cost pay­ments. The addi­tion of Polka­dot fea­tures trad­ing, bor­row­ing and lend­ing on parachains like Cen­trifuge, HydraDX and Moonbeam.

Launched in 2020, Polka­dot is a net­work of mul­ti­ple inde­pen­dent blockchains, also referred to as parachains. Such blockchains oper­ate in par­al­lel with each oth­er to allow for faster trans­ac­tions while ben­e­fit­ing from Polkadot’s over­all secu­ri­ty and decentralization.

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The num­ber of blockchains sup­port­ed by USDC is now high­er than the num­ber of net­works sup­port­ed by rival sta­ble­coin USDT, which sup­ports a total of 11 net­works at the time of writ­ing. In August 2023, USDT issuer Teth­er stopped mint­ing the sta­ble­coin on three blockchains, includ­ing Bit­coin Omni Lay­er, Bit­coin Cash and Kusama. The firm cit­ed lack of inter­est from users.

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