
According to an announcement on September 20, Wormhole 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.
End users can take advantage of this new feature through the Portal bridge, and developers can use Wormhole Connect to integrate it into their applications.

The Wormhole team claims that the new integration will reduce liquidity issues and user confusion. “There may be multiple versions of these bridged USDC tokens on these emerging chains,” it said, “which could lead to fragmented liquidity, poor pricing, and a confusing experience for users and developers.” CCTP will help solve this problem by “creating a native cross-chain USDC that can be burned and minted on connected chains.”
When Circle first issued USDC, it was only available on Ethereum. If a user wants to transfer USDC to another chain, they need to use a bridge to lock their native USDC on Ethereum and mint a derivative version on the other chain. However, multiple bridging protocols with various USDC derivatives can sometimes lead to confusion for end users.
In 2021, Circle launched a stablecoin on its second chain, Stellar. Subsequently, it continued to be launched on other chains, and as of September 20, the number of compatible networks reached 14.
But for users moving native USDC from one network to another, they still need to deposit the tokens into a Circle partner’s account and then use that account to withdraw them to the other network. Partly due to this complexity, many users continue to use the bridged version of the coin rather than its native version.
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On April 26, Circle launched CCTP, a set of smart contracts and application programming interfaces (APIs) that can be used to destroy USDC on one chain and re-mint it on another without requiring users to deposit into a Circle partner account .
At launch, CCTP only allows transfers between Ethereum and Avalanche and vice versa. Since then, it has been expanded to support Optimism and Arbitrum networks. Circle plans to add more networks in 2023, according to the agreement document.
An announcement on September 20 stated that CCTP has now been integrated into the Wormhole bridge interface, allowing Wormhole users to transfer native USDC between chains supported by CCTP for the first time. These networks currently include Ethereum, Optimism, Avalanche and Arbitrum.
Wormhole is not the only bridge that has implemented or plans to integrate with CCTP. Wanchan offers similar functionality, and Celer, Hyperlane, LayerZero, and LI.FI have also indicated their intention to implement the feature soon, according to Circle’s April 26 announcement.
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