EURC

EURC was created by Centre, a consortium co-founded by Circle and Coinbase to develop price-stable cryptocurrencies. Centre and USDC were simultaneously announced in May 2018. USDC was officially introduced and launched on Sept. 26, 2018, while EURC was launched on June 30, 2022. In August 2023, Centre was sunset as a stand-alone entity, and its responsibilities were fully transferred to Circle due to increased regulatory clarity and an attempt to streamline operations. Coinbase agreed to take an undisclosed equity stake in Circle and receive a portion of USDC reserve asset interest revenue.

Technological Upgrades

Originally launched on Ethereum, EURC has since expanded to offer native support (minted and burned) on Avalanche, Solana, and Stellar. Notably, Circle supports a path to native EURC support for networks that introduce a bridged version of EURC and follow the Bridged USDC Standard.

Occasionally, Circle releases backward-compatible updates to its stablecoins. In November 2023, the first upgrade since early 2021 was announced for a phased rollout through January 2024. The v2.2 upgrade “significantly reduced gas costs, improved support for account abstraction, and further bolstered security for transactions on EVM blockchains.”

Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol

First announced in September 2022, Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) went live for USDC on Ethereum and Avalanche in April 2023. CCTP facilitates the transfer of native USDC across networks through a “burn and mint” bridging method, rather than the traditional “lock and mint” method. Through CCTP, Circle eliminates risks associated with cross-chain bridges and wrapped tokens. A commercially reasonable search found that CCTP does not support EURC transfers.

Circle Web3 Services

In August 2023, Circle launched the Programmable Wallets product, allowing developers to embed customized crypto wallets into applications. Developers can customize wallets by integrating USDC, opting for wallet infrastructure models such as developer-controlled wallets or user-controlled wallets, opting for wallet account types such as externally owned accounts (EOA) or smart contract accounts (SCA), etc. Since this launch, Circle has expanded its Web3 services offering by introducing features such as the following:

After creating an account, developers can access Circle’s Web3 services through the Web3 Services Console. Notably, these services are typically free up to a certain usage level. Once the free usage tier has been hit, developers must pay for additional usage of the product, with the price decreasing as usage grows to certain levels. A commercially reasonable search could not confirm whether EURC is supported in Circle’s suite of Web3 Services.

Circle Research

In September 2023, Circle launched its Circle Research arm to “accelerate and amplify technical innovation within crypto, blockchain, and Web3 through open-source research.” Its first contribution was releasing the open-source Perimeter Protocol, which allows developers to build EURC credit applications using the protocol’s smart contracts for lending pools, loan constructs, and permissioning. Since then, Circle Research has continued to publish research and/or open-source tools related to Robust Thresholds ECDSA Signatures, Recoverable Wrapper Tokens, R-Pools, and Chainmail.