Circle stablecoin USDC to launch on Cosmos via Noble network

Although neither the stablecoin issuer nor the Noble development team gave an exact launch date, it was announced that USDC will soon be available on 50+ Cosmos IBC chains via the Noble network.

Om March 28, Circle posted the news on Twitter:

The Noble team was more explicit in its blog post announcement, emphasizing that the introduction of USDC to a chain has never happened to the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) ecosystem before and that this will bring liquidity and solve the problems of Cosmos users when they want to move assets across networks:

This integration will catalyze hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidity over the coming months in Cosmos, and will seek to rectify the challenges that users and appchains face when interacting with bridged assets sourced from other ecosystems. In the future, we believe that hundreds of highly liquid, well-adopted Cosmos blockchains will exist. Every blockchain needs a canonical and fungible version of USDC, and Noble exists to fulfill this critical need.

Related: What is Cosmos blockchain: full review of the promising technology

Cosmos is a network of interconnected blockchain networks using the Tendermint Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol, the Application Blockchain Interface, and the Cosmos Software Development Kit. The networks are connected via the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, which enables the transfer of assets between networks across the Cosmos ecosystem.

With over 50 IBC networks, Noble is a Cosmos chain bringing native asset issuance to the ecosystem, according to Mintscan.

Yet, according to the Noble team, native USDC issuance is just the beginning:

In the future, we see Noble as the gateway for all digital assets coming into the IBC ecosystem. These assets can include stablecoins and any other on-chain digital representation of real-world value.

The decision to incorporate USDC into Cosmos is also related to the upcoming migration of the popular lending platform dYdX from Ethereum to Cosmos’ IBC protocol.

Noble CEO Jelena Djuric told Blockworks in an interview:

We’re very much doing this [USDC launch] in preparation for dYdX’s launch. We see this as a huge moment for the Cosmos and the app chain thesis because this is a project that has already got a lot of success on Ethereum.