Wormhole Integrates Circle's Cross-chain Transfer Protocol

Cross-chain interoperability protocol Wormhole announced its integration with Circle's $USDC Cross-chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to provide a seamless cross-chain development experience. Wormhole is launching a new set of contracts integrating CCTP, enabling developers to compose generic messages on top of cross-chain, native $USDC transfers. The integration is live on testnet.

Circle announced CCTP last September, which aims to allow users and developers to send and transact in $USDC natively across different blockchains. Using CCTP, when a user initiates a sending of $USDC from one chain to another, the $USDC on the source chain will be sent to a smart contract and be burned, not locked. Then the same amount of $USDC will be minted natively on the destination chain.

Wormhole's integration with CCTP aims to enable more powerful cross-chain applications. Developers can use native $USDC transfers as a routine to implement cross-chain swaps between native assets on different chains.