“Circle is delving into the world of Ethereum’s Layer 2, Polygon, to facilitate the direct provision of USDC liquidity within the proof-of-stake scaling protocol.
Circle, the stablecoin issuer, has made an exciting announcement, revealing their initiation of minting USD Coin natively on Ethereum’s Layer-2 scaling protocol, Polygon. USDC is now readily accessible to both users and developers, eliminating the need for bridging the stablecoin from Ethereum to another blockchain. The Circle Mint and Circle’s developer application programming interfaces (APIs) have seamlessly integrated with Polygon-based USDC, harnessing Polygon’s remarkable scaling capabilities.
As per Circle’s recent announcement, this development opens up a world of opportunities for businesses and developers. They can now construct decentralized applications with USDC on Polygon. This novel offering promises near-instant, low-fee transactions for a myriad of use cases, spanning payments, remittances, trading, borrowing, and lending.
Before Circle’s native Polygon USDC offering, protocol users had to rely on bridged USDC (USDC.e) sourced from the Ethereum blockchain. This token, distinct from the new offering, is not issued by Circle and will be redeemable at a 1:1 ratio for United States dollars. Notably, Circle had previously facilitated deposits and withdrawals for USDC.e on Polygon through the Circle Mint and its APIs. However, the issuer has outlined plans to discontinue this service from November 10th. Users attempting to send USDC.e to Circle Mint accounts post this date have been cautioned that their assets may become irretrievable.
The freshly minted Polygon USDC token currently boasts a market capitalization of approximately 4.3 million USDC within the scaling protocol, according to data from Polygonscan. Circle further emphasizes that the introduction of native Polygon USDC will underpin cost-effective global payments and remittances, along with seamless access to trading, borrowing, and lending on prominent decentralized finance platforms, including Aave, Compound, Curve, Uniswap, and QuickSwap.
The USDC issuer has also laid out plans for launching a cross-chain transfer protocol to Polygon, enabling interoperability with other blockchain networks. This move is set to unlock the transfer of Polygon-based USDC to and from the Ethereum blockchain, further enhancing the flexibility and accessibility of this digital asset.”
