On stage at Solana Breakpoint today, Circle, a global digital financial technology firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin, announced plans to expand native support of Euro Coin and access to their new permissionless cross-chain infrastructure, Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, on Solana in the first half of 2023. The announcement marks the company’s first in a series of intended commitments to provide expanded support for both initiatives since their respective launch announcements in June and September.

A regulated, euro-backed stablecoin, Euro Coin is issued under the same full-reserve model and built on the same pillars of trust, transparency, and security that have made USDC one of the world’s most widely-used dollar digital currencies with over $42 billion in circulation as of November 4, 2022. Together, Euro Coin and USDC aim to bring faster, inexpensive transactions to global commerce and unlock new opportunities for multi-currency digital finance and on-chain foreign exchange (FX), where daily volume in traditional markets can top $6.6 trillion globally.Together, Euro Coin and USDC aim to bring faster, inexpensive transactions to global commerce and unlock new opportunities for multi-currency digital finance and on-chain foreign exchange (FX).

“The availability of Euro Coin on Solana unlocks new use cases for instant FX, provides optionality for traders with a new base currency, allows for Euro Coin lending and borrowing and will be available alongside USDC as a payment currency in Solana Pay,” said Sheraz Shere, Head of Payments at Solana Labs. “Stablecoins such as Euro Coin on fast, efficient chains with near instant settlement like Solana will be the future of banking and fintech.”

FTX, one of the largest digital asset exchanges, intends to support deposits, withdrawals and trading of Euro Coin on Solana at launch. Many of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols on Solana have also expressed their intent to support Euro Coin at launch, including Raydium and Solend.

“A multi-currency strategy for stablecoins provides users with optionality, and multi-chain availability makes it easy to access liquidity,” said Joao Reginatto, VP of Product at Circle. “Solana is a logical next step for Euro Coin and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol given the depth and breadth of their developer ecosystem. We’re excited to watch this grow as we launch early next year.”

Originally announced at Converge22, Circle’s annual crypto conference, Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol empowers developers to build seamless user experiences for sending and transacting USDC natively across blockchains. By effectively teleporting USDC from one ecosystem to another, developers can maximize capital efficiency and create novel cross-chain dApps that stack together the various functionalities of trading, lending, payments, NFTs, gaming and more.

The permissionless protocol is expected to launch in the beginning of 2023 on Ethereum and Avalanche, and expand to Solana in the first half of 2023. Among a growing roster of integration partners, Wormhole intends to support the protocol’s implementation on Solana at launch.