Circle partners with Axelar on cross-chain initiative for USDC

Circle has announced a partnership with Axelar focused on the use of USDC and cross-chain applications.

Avalanche, Cosmos, Ethereum, Polygon, and Sui will be the first chains integrated with Axelar's General Message Passing (GMP). The announcement comes shortly after Circle announced its native USDC bridging protocol last month.

When a user bridges an asset, the token they receive on the other end is non-native, meaning it is a synthetic version subject to liquidity issues and security vulnerabilities if the bridge is attacked and hacked.

In essence, Circle oversees and verifies the movement of native USDC between chains removing the need for wrapped assets. Axelar’s GMP takes this process one step further and allows applications to integrate Circle’s bridge.

One of the main goals of the partnership is to simplify the cross-chain user experience. Use cases for new applications include cross-chain swaps, one-click trade execution, and cross-chain NFTs. For example, a user could utilize a wallet on Cosmos to purchase an NFT on Ethereum, removing the need to bridge and download a new wallet. The NFT could then be used in applications built on Cosmos, even though it was purchased on Ethereum.

“Composing Circle USDC Bridge with Axelar General Passing is a key step to achieve global interoperability across dApps on different chains,” Axelar’s co-founder Sergey Gorbunov said.