Circle launches USDC Bridge for native transfers across 17 chains

Circle launched USDC Bridge on Friday, offering native transfers of USDC between at least 17 blockchains. The service moves the exact USDC token by burning it on the source chain and minting it on the destination chain.

Users see fees before confirming a transfer and the bridge handles gas fees automatically. The platform provides live status updates while transactions are processed to show progress and finalization.

The bridge is built on Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), which the company introduced in April 2023. Circle reports that CCTP supports a broader set of chains and facilitates hundreds of millions of stablecoin transfers each day.

USDC Bridge supports transfers among at least 17 Ethereum Virtual Machine–compatible blockchains, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Monad, Optimism, Polygon, Sonic and World Network. Circle’s CCTP also covers non-EVM chains such as Solana, Sui and Aptos.

By using a burn-and-mint method, the bridge avoids relying on wrapped or synthetic tokens to represent USDC across chains. Circle described the design as intended to make transfers predictable and transparent.

The company did not disclose detailed routing paths or guaranteed settlement times for every supported chain. Circle emphasized the upfront fee display and real-time status updates as ways for users to monitor transfers.

The launch follows a recent class action filed against Circle that alleges the company failed to freeze about $230 million in USDC that moved through CCTP after an exploit of the Drift Protocol on April 1. Plaintiffs accuse Circle of aiding and abetting conversion and negligence.

More than 100 people have joined the suit, which is being pursued by the law firm Mira Gibb and seeks damages to be determined at trial.

Circle’s USDC is widely used across decentralized finance and centralized platforms, and the company has expanded its cross-chain tooling since introducing CCTP.