The USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin will soon be available on the Arbitrum blockchain in native form, according to a statement made by Circle on June 1.
Circle stated that the new USDC will be “native to Arbitrum” and that this asset will be regarded as Arbitrum’s official version of USDC.
On June 8, Circle announced that the new coin would launch.
The business stated that Ethereum is presently the bridge for all USDC on Arbitrum. On Arbitrum block explorers, the previous Ethereum-bridged version will be identified as USDC.e and will be progressively replaced by the recently released native version of USDC.
Benefits related to redeemability, on- and off-ramps, and future enhancements will be offered via the new native token. According to Circle, it intends to introduce its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol to Arbitrum, enabling quicker transactions between Arbitrum and Ethereum.
A smooth shift of liquidity will be ensured by working with apps in its ecosystem, according to the release from Arbitrum. There will be “no immediate change to the Arbitrum bridge,” according to the statement, and bridging USDC will continue to function normally.
For the time being, USDC may be available on Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, TRON, Algorand, Stellar, Flow, and Hedera. According to block explorer statistics, Ethereum appears to host the great majority of USDC, holding $27 billion of the stablecoin’s $29 billion market cap.
Although it functions as a layer 2 network and has potential gains from Ethereum’s success, Arbitrum currently only has a small amount of USDC that has been bridged to Ethereum.
There is presently $1.1 billion in bridged USDC on Arbitrum.
The USDC updates come as the general market for stablecoins, which are digital currencies like USDC meant to trade at or near the exact value of a fiat currency, has trended adversely for most firms in the industry over the previous 12 months.
As a result of a severe decrease in its own market share during the previous 12 months, Circle was no exception. Over that time, according to data from CoinGecko, USDC’s market value decreased from $55 billion to $29 billion.
