Circle Revamps Stablecoins USDC, EURC With Upgrade Focused on Gas and Security

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Circle has announced a new v2.2 upgrade for its usd coin and euro coin digital stablecoins. The changes aim to significantly reduce gas costs, enable new use cases, and bolster security.

Circle Unveils 2.2 Upgrade for Stablecoin Suite

Circle unveiled the latest upgrade in a blog post on Thursday, touting six key changes coming to the usd coin (USDC) and euro coin (EURC) smart contracts. The upgrades will roll out through early 2024 across major blockchains like Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon that support USDC and EURC. The company detailed that the last major changes occurred in 2021.

The first big change enables USDC and EURC to be transferred directly from smart contract wallets using signature validation. This improvement will allow developers to build decentralized applications (dapps) that let users pay network fees in USDC or EURC instead of underlying crypto assets like ethereum (ETH).

Second, Circle has optimized USDC’s blocklist feature to check addresses against a more efficient data structure, resulting in gas savings of around 6-7% for common transactions like transfers. “Cost reduction can range between 6-7% for functions invoked in many common use cases, such as making a transfer, payment, or trade with USDC or EURC,” the announcement explained.

The contracts will also include logic to prevent validation on unauthorized forks, protecting users if networks splinter into competing blockchains. Additional tweaks remove unnecessary operations that were incorrectly checking the blocklist. Circle is also renaming EURC’s token symbol from EUROC to EURC to match their unified branding.

The upgrades require no action from developers or users. Circle says the changes have been audited and won’t cause any breaks. “Today, we’ll begin a phased rollout of the v2.2 upgrade to USDC and EURC on testnet and mainnet for each supported blockchain, which we plan to complete over the next few months,” Circle concluded.

Circle’s upgrade comes off the heels of rumors saying the firm plans to go public in early 2024. While the company disclosed that going public is part of Circle’s roadmap, it does not respond to circulating rumors.

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