Circle has just integrated USDC, their flagship stablecoin, into both Sony’s Soneium, a layer-2 solution on Ethereum, and the Sui blockchain.
By launching on both platforms, USDC continues its strategy of expanding the reach of stablecoins, especially in the DeFi (DeFi) space and beyond.
USDC Expands Utility on Sui and Soneium to Increase Liquidity
On September 17, Sui—one of the prominent layer-1 blockchains on the market—announced the launch of Circle’s stablecoin USDC along with the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). CCTP enables secure USDC transfers between blockchains, enhancing the stability and interoperability of the Sui ecosystem. This is expected to improve liquidity and transaction efficiency across multiple applications, including DeFi and digital commerce platforms.
“The presence of USDC as a native asset on Sui marks another major step in the maturity of the Sui ecosystem. This gives our community seamless access to one of the world’s most trusted digital coins,” Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Mysten Labs—the developer of Sui, said in an email to BeInCrypto.
The addition of USDC on Sui also strengthens its existing DeFi landscape, which currently has over $700 million in total value locked (TVL) and $215 million in bridged USDC. Sui plans to transition from Ethereum-based bridged USDC to native USDC, ensuring a smoother experience for developers and users. This transition will happen alongside applications in the ecosystem, slowly shifting liquidity to the native stablecoin.
As USDC becomes the native asset, the Sui ecosystem will benefit from one of the most widely accepted digital currencies, which can be used for a wide range of financial products. By enabling more efficient cross-chain transactions, USDC helps streamline the user experience across Sui’s DeFi, gaming, and e-commerce domains.
The development comes after Circle announced a partnership with Sony on September 15. The partnership aims to integrate USDC as a primary token for transactions on Soneium, Sony’s Ethereum layer-2 (L2) solution. This will allow Soneium to provide decentralized solutions for industries ranging from entertainment to global finance.
“The USDC Bridge Standard is a specification and process for implementing a bridged form of USDC on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains. Bridged USDC acts as a proxy for native USDC held on Ethereum, allowing developers building on layer 2 blockchains like Soneium to easily power their applications with digital USD payments,” Circle explain in its official announcement.
Circle’s decision to expand USDC’s presence on both Sui and Soneium comes in line with growing demand for stablecoins. BeInCrypto recently reported that the stablecoin market has reached a total market capitalization of $170 billion, recovering from the collapse of TerraUSD in 2022. USDC, with a market capitalization of $35 billion, remains one of the top stablecoins, alongside Tether (USDT) and Dai (DAI).