Gateway Breaks Records with $4.5B+ in USDC Cross-Chain Transfers

Circle's Gateway service has achieved its highest weekly volume for USDC minting and transfers, pushing the total lifetime volume past $4.5 billion. This milestone is significant considering that most retail users are not familiar with this infrastructure.

Gateway is Circle's solution to one of crypto's persistent problems: moving stablecoins between blockchains without using traditional bridges. Instead of locking tokens on one chain and minting wrapped versions, Gateway uses a burn-and-mint mechanism. This process involves burning USDC on the source chain, issuing an attestation, and then minting fresh USDC on the destination chain.

The system operates across multiple blockchains, including Solana and EVM-compatible networks like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and others. Circle claims that the process completes in under 500 milliseconds on supported chains.