As part of an initiative bringing stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) to other blockchains, USDC is now available on the public Algorand blockchain. This is in addition to its existing availability as an Ethereum-based token.
Offering USDC on Algorand gives the asset layer 1 scalability, touting more than 1,000 transactions per second, or TPS, while costing less than a penny in fees (1/20 of one cent to be precise), said a statement provided to Cointelegraph.
“This is a defining milestone for frictionless mainstream payments as well as sophisticated financial applications,” Algorand Inc.'s founder, Silvio Micali, said in the statement, adding: “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.”
USDC launched in 2018 as a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin running on the Ethereum blockchain, under the purview of the Centre Consortium, the overwatch entity responsible for USDC. In June 2020, Centre unveiled its Multichain USDC Framework, aiming to see the token launch on other chains in addition to its original Ethereum-based token.
“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," Coinbase CFO, Alesia Haas, said in the statement. "Today's launch represents a significant improvement to USDC's scalability, improving its utility and making it a significantly more useful protocol for solving real-world financial problems."
Coinbase and Circle sit behind the Centre Consortium as co-founders. Showing its popularity, USDC recently achieved a $1 billion market cap.