Overview
- Circle introduced the USDC Bridge on Friday, giving everyday users a direct interface to its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol for moving USDC between blockchains.
- Transfers use a 1:1 burn-and-mint process that destroys USDC on the source chain and creates it on the destination, which avoids wrapped tokens and third‑party bridge liquidity pools.
- The interface shows fees before approval and automatically supplies destination gas, and a reporter’s test to move $20 from Ethereum to Optimism cost about $0.20.
- Circle says it charges no service fee for using CCTP or the bridge, though users still pay network gas on both the sending and receiving chains.
- At launch the bridge supports at least 17 Ethereum‑style (EVM‑compatible) networks such as Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and Monad, while non‑EVM chains like Solana remain outside this interface even though CCTP supports them; days earlier, a class action accused Circle of negligence over about $230 million moved through CCTP after the April 1 Drift exploit, and the company has not issued a detailed response.