The Block: Centre's USDC coin is now supported by Algorand in addition to Ethereum

Centre's USDC stablecoin is now supported by the Algorand blockchain, according to an announcement Wednesday from the consortium. It's the second blockchain to support the coin, joining Ethereum.

According to a statement from Centre, Algorand will allow users to exchange USDC — the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether with over 7% global market share — at a speed of over 1,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a transaction fee of 1/20th of a cent, making transactions both faster and cheaper than those on Ethereum. Ethereum can process 15 TPS at an average transaction fee of about $2.65.

“As evidenced by the recent and very rapid growth and usage of stablecoins on public chains like Ethereum, there is a tremendous need for blockchain infrastructure that can scale to support significantly higher transaction throughput and lower fees on public Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure,” Centre said in its announcement.

The announcement comes almost two weeks after the consortium’s recent release of “USDC 2.0” update which enables services, such as wallet developers, to provide USDC backing to pay transaction fees on behalf of their users, also called “gasless sends” on the Ethereum network, as reported by The Block.

In a statement, Alesia Haas, Chief Financial Officer at Coinbase, said the move would open the door for more widespread adoption of the stablecoin. “Expanding USDC from Ethereum to additional blockchains like Algorand will ensure USDC has the flexibility to support everything from emerging DeFi projects to large-scale financial institutions."