USDC launching on Polygon PoS, Base and Polkadot blockchains

Quick Take

The USDC stablecoin founded by Circle and Coinbase is launching on six new blockchains including Polygon PoS, Base, Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism and Cosmos via the Noble network.
Announcement follows Coinbase taking a stake in Circle in an effort to shore up USDC amid crumbling share of stablecoin market.

Circle Internet Financial, now the sole organization in charge of managing USDC, is set to announce the stablecoin will be launching on six new blockchains that include Polygon PoS, Base, Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism and Cosmos via the Noble network, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Earlier this week, Circle and Coinbase said they had reorganized their relationship with regard to USDC. Besides disbanding the Centre Consortium, which had managed the governance of USDC since its founding in 2018, Coinbase also acquired a stake in Circle.

USDC was already available on Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Stellar, Algorand, Tron, Flow, Solana and Hedera. The addition of more blockchains could boost adoption of the stablecoin.

USDC market share

While USDC has been losing market share, the world's biggest stablecoin issued by Tether has been asserting its dominance. Additionally, Silicon Valley payments firm PayPal has launched its own stablecoin.

Coinbase and Circle have little influence over what people's preferred stablecoins are, argues Avivah Litan, a senior blockchain industry analyst with Gartner who is dubious adding more protocols will make a difference.

"The bottom line is money is flowing out of the chains, and support for more chains won’t make it flow in," she added.