The second-largest stablecoin by market cap, USDC will soon be available on the Stellar blockchain. The rollout will happen sometime in Q1 2021 and will enable users to enjoy the ease of transferring a stable store of value for a fraction of a cent.
According to a press release announcing the development, the decision to enable USDC support on the Stellar blockchain follows a period of remarkable growth for both projects.
The USDC stablecoin has seen an over 500% growth, soaring to a market cap above $2.8 billion, and cementing its position as the most widely used regulated stablecoin. The Stellar blockchain, on the other hand, now boasts over 4.5 million accounts and continues to cater effectively to the customer base of financial institutions, processing over 1 billion transactions since launch.
Bringing the USDC stablecoin to Stellar will allow institutions, retail users and developers to take advantage of Stellar’s 5-second average ledger close time and send transactions for a minimal fee.
Jeremy Allaire, Chairman and CEO of Circle, shared his thoughts on the new partnership, including his excitement at being able to bring USDC to Stellar. He said:
We value the increased interoperability and wide range of developers that the Stellar network brings to the table, and look forward to seeing how adding a strong and stable USD anchor to Stellar grows its ecosystem and its importance as a platform driving global financial inclusion.
Stellar will become the third blockchain with native support for USDC. The stablecoin which is being pioneered by Circle and Coinbase via the Centre Consortium launched first on Ethereum. In September 2020, USDC officially integrated with the Algorand blockchain.
CNIR also reported in August, the launch of USDC 2.0, a new version of the stablecoin that introduced “gasless sends” as well as other security enhancements.
At the time of writing Stellar (XLM) was trading at a $0.07 price with a market cap of $118 million. USD Coin (USDC) on the other hand, had a market cap north of $2.7 billion.
