USD Coin Avalanche Bridged (USDC.e) — Project Update

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Biggest Stories of 2025

• Avalanche MENA expansion at Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Avalanche established the Avalanche Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Foundation in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), launched the first private blockchain track within Hub71, and partnered with LuLu Financial Holdings to build blockchain-native remittance infrastructure, potentially launching a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 in 2026 6. This signals a new phase of regulated, large-scale adoption for Avalanche across MENA, strengthening the network that hosts USDC.e. (December 18, 2025)
• Circle tests USDCx on Aleo. Circle began testing USDCx, a privacy-preserving version of USDC, on the Aleo testnet using zkSNARKs for transaction encryption, with the test asset fully backed 1:1 by standard USDC held in Circle's xReserve infrastructure 7. The Aleo team revealed plans to launch USDCx, described as a "private and programmable stablecoin," in January 2026 8. This illustrates Circle's continued expansion of the USDC product family beyond the standard bridged and native forms. (December 9, 2025)
• Circle's native USDC and CCTP go live on Starknet. Circle's native USDC and the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) launched on Starknet, introducing seamless cross-chain transfers without wrapped tokens and offering 1:1 capital efficiency across 18 other blockchains 9. Starknet continues to support bridged USDC (USDC.e) from Ethereum, with users able to migrate gas-free via a portal on StarkGate, providing a direct precedent for how bridged-to-native transitions are handled. (December 3, 2025)
• Circle Gateway mainnet launch. Circle Gateway went live on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Unichain, Optimism, Polygon, and Avalanche mainnet, with developers invited to reference the documentation for permissionless integrations 1. This marked the transition of Circle's chain-abstraction product from testnet to production across major networks including Avalanche. (August 19, 2025)
• Circle Gateway announced and enters testnet. Circle shared plans to launch Circle Gateway, a crosschain primitive allowing users to deposit USDC into a non-custodial smart contract to create a unified balance accessible in real time across supported chains, initially rolling out on the Avalanche, Base, and Ethereum testnets in July 2025 2. Gateway subsequently went live on those testnets 3. This was the first step toward eliminating manual bridging for USDC users. (July 1–22, 2025)
• Bridged-to-Native USDC upgrade on World Chain. The World Chain team disabled bridging for USDC.e on the canonical Ethereum <> World Chain bridge on May 22, 2025, in preparation for a USDC upgrade, with crosschain transfers for native USDC to be enabled via CCTP V2 1011. This is a direct example of a network retiring bridged USDC in favor of native USDC, the same dynamic that applies to USDC.e on Avalanche. (May 20–22, 2025)
• USDC on Story Protocol. The Story Protocol team announced that bridged USDC via Circle's Bridged USDC Standard and Stargate was live on Story 12. This expanded the reach of Circle's bridged USDC standard to another network. (March 18, 2025)
• USDC.e on Sonic. Sonic Labs announced that bridged USDC via Circle's Bridged USDC Standard was live on the Sonic network 13. This added another deployment of the bridged USDC standard. (January 9, 2025)
• Bridged USDC on BounceBit. The BounceBit team announced that Bridged USDC was available on BounceBit, with USDC enabled as an eligible asset for CeDeFi yield 14. This broadened bridged USDC's use in yield-bearing applications. (January 28, 2025)