USDC Launches on Base And Optimism

On the 29^th of August, Jeremy Allaire – the CEO of Circle, the company that mints and holds governance over USDC – announced that the popular stablecoin would be coming to Base and Optimism within a week.

The launch was part of Circle’s plan to improve the utility of USDC by bringing the stablecoin to more blockchains in a native token, eliminating the need for bridged Ethereum tokens. The decision came shortly after the announcement of a new super chain agreement with Optimism, with Circle now assuming a more active role in the Optimism collective’s day-to-day dealings.

Native Support

The two new variants of the USDC stablecoin have gone live on both mainnets earlier this morning. Both variants were built on the OP stack, and their launch is a part of Circle’s Stable September initiative, which aims to drive the adoption of their stablecoin by providing extra assurances to devs and investors worldwide.

1/ It’s here. #StableSeptember. The day you’ve all been waiting for – what comes first? How about two launches on the same day?

Introducing $USDC on @optimismFND and USDC on @BuildOnBase, two leading L2 scaling solutions for Ethereum built on the OP Stack. pic.twitter.com/v3SgJBZ7qG

— Circle (@circle) September 5, 2023

Now that the two blockchains support un-bridged USDC, the bridged USDC stablecoins will likely be deprecated at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, Circle’s team has warned the community not to send USDC.e to Circle accounts, as they are not compatible, and doing so may result in a loss of funds.

“Please do not attempt to send bridged USDC.e on OP/Base to your Circle Account, as it may not be recoverable and could result in a loss of funds. The Optimism Foundation will be working with ecosystem participants to help facilitate the migration from bridged USDC.e to native USDC.”

Open For Business

The launch of USDC on the Base and Optimism brings the total of blockchains with native support for the stablecoin up to 11, allowing developers and businesses alike to partake in the benefits of the rapidly rising digital dollar across multiple ecosystems. For comparison, Circle’s greatest competitor, Tether, has made their USDT stablecoin available on 7 blockchains.

In spite of the minor hiccup caused by Base’s temporary outage – which lasted for about two hours – the launch seems to have gone smoothly, with no major problems reported as of yet.

The outage was the first to occur on the network since its midsummer launch. Thankfully, the issue did not affect anyone’s funds and seems to have been nothing but a mild infrastructure issue. A hotfix has since been applied, and network activity has returned to normal.