USDC Ecosystem Spotlight: USDC broadens DeFi footprint as value transferred on-chain surpasses $10B
USD Coin (USDC) has seen significant traction in the last few weeks, with leading projects in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector announcing support, just as the US Dollar-backed stablecoin surpassed $10 billion in on-chain transfers. With Compound, Dharma, dYdX, Liquidity Network and Coinbase Commerce announcing the integration of USDC into their platforms, CENTRE makes solid progress towards its mission of establishing open standards for fiat tokens on the internet.
Compound recently launched v2 of their open-source protocol for algorithmic, efficient money markets on the Ethereum blockchain, which now supports USDC. Compound users can either lend USDC and earn interest, or borrow USDC using other Ethereum assets as collateral — with instant liquidity (deposit and withdraw whenever you want), no counterparties or peers.
Dharma, a peer to peer lending platform built on Ethereum, recently added support for USDC. Now, Dharma users can borrow and lend USDC at attractive rates from anywhere in the world, instantly. Dharma has built a beautiful user experience and it doesn’t get much easier to borrow or lend USDC. For borrowing USDC, select the amount you want to borrow, send your collateral to the Dharma smart contracts, and your principal should arrive in minutes. If you’re looking to lend USDC, specify an amount you want to lend, send your funds, and start earning interest.
dYdX is a powerful decentralized exchange for margin trading, borrowing and lending. Since going live in May, the platform has done ~$25M in trade volume, and originated ~$15M in borrow volume. dYdX users can now lend or borrow USDC instantly, with no wait time for matching counterparties or minimum lock up periods. Lenders can deposit USDC to earn a market determined interest rate that compounds continuously. The capital can also be withdrawn anytime. Borrowers can borrow USDC, so long as it is sufficiently collateralized by ETH or DAI. dYdX will also soon be supporting USDC denominated pairs for margin trading natively in the platform. This will allow users to borrow and trade USDC to leverage long ETH, use USDC to collateralize short ETH positions or trade between USDC and DAI.
The Liquidity Network recently integrated USDC into their platform. With the Liquidity mobile wallet, you can transfer USDC for free — no blockchain fees, no gas. Simply convert USDC to fUSDC (free and fast off-chain USDC), and send fUSDC on the Liquidity commit-chain near-instantly.
Finally, Coinbase announced that Coinbase Commerce now supports USDC. Merchants can accept payments denominated in USDC, with price stability now added to the benefits of cryptocurrencies: no transaction fees, no chargebacks, no geographical limitations.
USDC was introduced by the CENTRE Consortium, a joint venture co-founded by Circle and Coinbase, to establish a standard for fiat on the internet and provides a governance framework and network for the global, mainstream adoption of asset-backed stablecoins.
You can learn more about USDC here, and tokenize or redeem USDC with both Circle and Coinbase. You can go here to read the monthly reports on US dollar reserves backing USDC issued by independent accounting firm, Grant Thornton LLP.