Circle, the issuer of US dollar stablecoins, has announced it has begun minting USD Coin (USDC) natively on the Ethereum layer 2 scaling protocol Polygon.
Users and developers can access USDC without bridging the stablecoin from Ethereum or another blockchain. Circle Mint and Circle’s developer APIs now support Polygon-based USDC, leveraging the scalability of Polygon.
Circle has announced that businesses and developers can create decentralized applications (DApps) using USDC on Polygon. The new offering enables 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 were required to utilize bridge USDC (USDC.e) from the Ethereum blockchain. Contrary to Circle’s new offering, which it guarantees will be redeemable at a 1:1 ratio for US dollars, the token is not issued by Circle.
Circle supported deposits and withdrawals for USDC.e on Polygon previously for Circle Mint and its APIs. The issuer intends to discontinue this service on November 10 and warns users attempting to send bridge USDC.e to Circle Mint accounts that their assets may be irretrievable after this date.
Circle also notes that the provision of native Polygon USDC will enable low-cost international payments and remittances, as well as access to trading, borrowing, and lending on prominent DeFi protocols, such as Aave, Compound, Curve, Uniswap, and Quickswap.
In addition, the USDC issuer intends to introduce a cross-chain transfer protocol for Polygon to facilitate interoperability with other blockchain networks. This will enable Polygon-based USDC transfers between the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchain.
