Goldman Sachs-backed global fintech firm Circle announced the launch of its stablecoin USDC on Algorand’s mainnet. In collaboration with the Centre Consortium, the platform announced that Algorand is now an official blockchain for USDC.
Following this development, Algorand becomes the second major blockchain to have the two most popular stablecoins- Tether [USDT] and Circle’s USD-pegged stablecoin USD Coin [USDC] after Ethereum.
According to the official blog post, the Algorand implementation of USDC will allow on-chain transactions that provide nearly instant settlement finality [5 seconds], with a transaction throughput approaching 1000 tps and current average transaction fees of nearly 1/20th of a cent [USD]. Using public APIs, developers can also swap USDC across Ethereum and Algorand.
Commenting on the new launch, cryptography pioneer and Turing award winner Silvio Micali, Founder of Algorand, Inc stated,
“This is a defining milestone for frictionless mainstream payments as well as sophisticated financial applications. This launch brings together the convenience of USDC and an advanced protocol for global financial exchange in which Layer-1 smart contracts are as simple and secure as ordinary payments.”
Previously in June this year, Circle had partnered with the not-for-profit organization, Algorand Foundation to bring fiat-backed stablecoin capability to the Algorand blockchain, as part of the broader effort from Centre Consortium for the development of Multichain USDC.
Besides, over the past year, USDC has grown significantly making it one of the largest stablecoins in the world. Its market cap stood at $1.83 at the time of writing. Having the two most popular stablecoins is likely to attract more high-value stablecoins on Algorand. Additionally, this launch also opens doors for the foundation to get a boost from Circle’s extensive list of investors with industry giants, such as Bitmain, and Goldman Sachs.
While stating that the launch represents a significant improvement to the stablecoin’s scalability, improving its utility and making it a significantly more useful protocol for solving real-world financial problems, Alesia Haas, Chief Financial Officer at Coinbase also added,
“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.”
