Circle has unveiled an official cross-chain transfer service, 'USDC Bridge', that allows native USDC to be moved between blockchains.

On April 17 local time, blockchain outlet The Block Crypto reported that the service is based on Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP. It moves native USDC, rather than wrapped or synthetic versions, to another chain using a 1-to-1 burn-and-mint method.

Circle introduced 'USDC Bridge' as a predictable and transparent transfer method. It shows fees in advance and allows users to check transfer progress. It also automatically handles gas exchange on the destination chain.

The service is an official interface designed to make CCTP transactions easier to use. CCTP is infrastructure Circle first introduced in 2023 to move its stablecoin between chains. It has since continued to expand the supported chains and overhauled the protocol to V2 last year.

Transaction costs vary depending on settings. Moving $20 worth of USDC from the Ethereum mainnet to Optimism was shown to cost about $0.20. Circle does not charge a separate fee to use the service itself. CCTP transfers require standard gas fees on the originating and destination chains, and 'fast' transfers may cost more.

CCTP supports layer-1 networks such as Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, Monad and Sei, as well as EVM-based layer-2 networks including Base, Polygon, HyperEVM, Ink and Unichain. At launch, 'USDC Bridge' appears to be limited to EVM-supported chains. As a result, Solana is excluded, while EVM-supporting chains such as Sei and Monad are included.

USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalisation. Circle has been issuing USDC natively on dozens of chains and in some applications such as Polymarket.