Circle’s Upgrade of USDC on Linea

Circle, the issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market cap USDC, plans to roll out the first seamless bridged-to-native USDC upgrade on the layer 2 blockchain Linea.

In an announcement on Mar. 5, Circle stated that the zero-knowledge powered Ethereum (ETH) layer 2 will be the first blockchain to witness this upgrade. Linea is set to transition from a bridged version of USDC to a native version.

Circle introduced the Bridged USD Standard in November 2023, and since then, USDC has become one of the most bridged assets within the crypto ecosystem.

New blockchains often deploy the bridged version of the currently $56 billion stablecoin in their testnet or mainnet environments. Circle has previously added native support to several EVM blockchains, rollups, and other Layer 2 platforms.

However, Linea is set to be the first blockchain network to seamlessly upgrade its bridged USDC, or USDC.e, to native issuance, ensuring the security of being fully reserved and redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars.

> “We’re making history with Circle by being the first to upgrade from bridged to native USDC with zero disruption. The same contract address, no liquidity fragmentation, just faster, more secure transactions—this is what building a seamless blockchain infrastructure looks like,” Linea announced on X.

The upgrade will initiate a bridging pause for USDC.e on March 16, 2025. However, USDC.e will remain usable in on-chain activities such as trading, spending, and swapping.

As Circle notes in its blog post announcing the launch of native USDC on Linea, support also means access to the stablecoin issuer’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). Circle will add CCTP V2 support for Linea after the zkEVM L2’s native USDC launch, facilitating cross-chain transfers connected to Ethereum, Avalanche, and Base.

Launched by Consensys, Linea has seen notable growth since its mainnet went live in July 2023. The number of decentralized applications on the network has surpassed 400, with more than $250 million in transactions.

Significant growth has been observed in use cases such as decentralized finance, gaming, non-fungible tokens, and digital identity. The Layer 2 remains the top zkEVM by total value secured and currently boasts over $190 million in total value locked, as per DeFiLlama.