Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol
Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol
Frictionless cross-chain transfers
CCTP enables USDC to flow natively 1:1 between blockchains, unifying liquidity and simplifying user experience.
Trusted By The Community
Why use cross-chain transfer protocol?
The most secure way to transfer USDC cross-chain
Maximum capital efficiency
Deliver secure 1:1 USDC cross-chain transfers through a native burn-and-mint process, eliminating the need for liquidity pools or third-party fillers.
Trust minimized
Every cross-chain transfer is validated by Circle, the same company you already trust for holding and transacting with USDC.
Open composability
Automate post-transfer transactions with Hooks for frictionless cross-chain deposits, asset swaps, purchases, and treasury management.
Seamless extensibility
As a foundational building block, CCTP integrates easily into apps, bridges, exchanges, wallets, and other smart contracts.
Deliver the best cross-chain experiences
CCTP V2:
More powerful, more flexible
CCTP V1 | CCTP V2 | |
|---|---|---|
Features | ||
Standard Transfer |  | |
Fast Transfer |  | |
Hooks | | |
User experience | Standard functionalities | Advanced functionalities |
Backwards | N/A | |
Blockchains | Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Noble, OP Mainnet, Polygon PoS, Solana, Sui, and Unichain | Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, and coming soon to Linea, Arbitrum, Solana. More blockchains to be announced |
how it works
Programmatic burning & minting
Initiate transfer on source chain
A user accesses your app to transfer USDC and specifies the recipient wallet address on the destination chain. Your app facilitates a burn of USDC on the source chain.
Fetch signed attestation from Circle
Circle observes and attests to the burn event on the source chain. With Fast Transfer, the attestation is available immediately. Your app requests the attestation from Circle.
Complete transfer on destination chain
Your app uses the attestation to mint USDC for the recipient on the destination chain. With Hooks, additional operations trigger automatically.
Flexible pricing to meet your needs
Standard Message Transfer
Standard USDC Transfer
Fast Message Transfer
Fast USDC Transfer
Hooks
Resources
FAQs
CCTP is a permissionless onchain utility that enables the flow of USDC across chains through native burning and minting. With CCTP, USDC is effectively teleported from one blockchain to another.
CCTP serves as permissionless infrastructure for developers to build on top of, or integrate into, their existing apps, bridges, exchanges, and wallets.
CCTP V1 is intended for developers looking to integrate standard cross-chain functionalities while CCTP V2 is intended for developers looking to integrate advanced cross-chain functionalities for faster speeds and enhanced composability.
Lock-and-mint bridges are applications that lock a user's native USDC within a smart contract on a source chain and then mint a wrapped or bridged form of USDC on a destination chain. This process incurs additional trust assumptions and can result in poor UX due to the fragmentation of liquidity.
In contrast, CCTP enables USDC to move securely 1:1 between blockchains via a native burn-and-mint process. The result is greater capital efficiency and unified liquidity with no creation of bridged forms of USDC.
As a low-level primitive, CCTP can be embedded within existing bridge apps to replace their lock-and-mint functionality.
Liquidity pool bridges are applications that hold large pools of USDC on a source chain and a destination chain in order to facilitate cross-chain swaps for end users. This process incurs additional trust assumptions and fees associated with the liquidity tied up on each chain.
In contrast, CCTP enables USDC to move securely 1:1 between blockchains via a native burn-and-mint process. The result is greater capital efficiency and unified liquidity without the need for large pools of USDC tokens.
As a low-level primitive, CCTP can be embedded within existing bridge apps to replace their liquidity pool functionality. Alternatively, CCTP could be used by the bridge provider to programmatically rebalance their liquidity pools behind the scenes and reduce operational costs.
No, CCTP is permissionless, which means any developer can integrate via our docs and GitHub repo.
For both CCTP V1 and CCTP V2, there would be a gas fee on the source blockchain and a gas fee on the destination blockchain for Standard Transfers. The app that integrates with either version would be responsible for determining how gas fees are handled and/or passed on to the end user.
The same gas fees apply for CCTP V2 Fast Transfer, with an additional fee collected on USDC mint onchain. Refer to the product fee schedule for more CCTP V2 Fast Transfer fee information.
No, CCTP V2 will operate with a distinct set of smart contracts and APIs, and will form its own distinct network of supported blockchains as it is not backwards compatible with CCTP V1 smart contracts.
However, developers can effectively stitch the two versions together under the hood to preserve a seamless UX and offer greater blockchain accessibility until CCTP V2 reaches blockchain support parity with CCTP V1.