Circle's USDC stablecoin launches on the fourth blockchain with Solana partnership

USD Coin, the stablecoin jointly launched by fintech firm Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase, has launched on its fourth blockchain.

USDC launches on Solana — Circle’s Jeremy Allaire (Photo: C-Span)

According to an Oct. 21 announcement, proof-of-stake blockchain Solana is the latest addition to the list of Official Chain partners for USDC. Circle chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire praised the Solana blockchain, saying “decentralized blockchain infrastructure is entering its 3rd generation with blockchains such as Solana, providing speed, efficiency and throughput that rivals most centralized financial market infrastructure.” He added:

“These technology breakthroughs hold the potential to transform enormous portions of the existing financial system. Capital markets to foreign exchange to global scale consumer payments can now move on-chain, enabling a more frictionless, inclusive and open financial system.”

Allaire claims that those developments can reduce friction on the global financial system, making finance more open and inclusive. According to the announcement, Solana claims to support up to 50,000 transactions per second, with settlement finality in 400 milliseconds, and a transaction cost that is a fraction of a cent.

More partners

Furthermore, Circle also announced involvement in three more projects—cryptocurrency quantitative trading firm Alameda Research, crypto asset exchange FTX Exchange, and Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Project Serum. The Solana-based USDC tokens are now integrated into all those services. Allaire claimed that USD Coin plays a key role in DeFi:

“USDC is the lifeblood of the DeFi ecosystem and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome USDC to the Solana community. We’ve seen a flurry of inbound interest from teams looking to build DeFi products on Solana recently, and a trusted stablecoin like USDC is a critical building block for many of them.”

Solana is the fourth blockchain supported by the stablecoin, which was launched on Ethereum and then added support for Algorand (ALGO) and earlier this month Stellar (XLM).