Digital payments company Circle has announced the launch of its stablecoin USDC on Avalanche. The main objective behind the stablecoin’s deployment is to enable developers and communities to engage with eco-friendly platforms and accelerate decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption. AVAX, Avalanche's native token, was one of the top gainers on Binance on Wednesday, up 15%.

According to the official blog post, users will now be able to deposit, withdraw, send as well as receive payments, and settle transactions with USDC on Avalanche.

The latest integration is expected to pave the way for transaction and payment options for developers and participants in Avalanche’s rapidly growing ecosystem. It consists of decentralized (DeFi) protocols, enterprise applications, and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, among others.

In turn, developers can benefit from Circle’s large suite of developer APIs. While talking about adding support for USDC on Avalanche at a time when the DeFi market continues to grow exponentially, Jeremy Allaire, CEO, and Co-founder of Circle, said:

“With USDC as the leading dollar digital currency for the decentralized economy, this integration will be instrumental for developers and communities looking to participate in one of the fastest, organically growing ecosystems in crypto.”

Notably, Avalanche’s C-Chain is among the most utilized smart contract blockchains that enable creating applications and assets compatible with Ethereum but are cost and time-effective. Hence, USDC’s expansion on this contract chain is expected to empower more developers.

Over the past year, Circle has made significant strides to aid the growth of USDC from a mere $4 billion at the beginning of the year. Today USDC’s total supply stands over $41 billion.

It has emerged as the fastest-growing stablecoin of 2021, even though it trails behind the market leader Tether (USDT) by market value. Besides Avalanche, the stablecoin is present on six other networks – Ethereum, Algorand Hedera, TRON, Stellar, and Solana.

The latest development is a part of Circle’s plans to make USDC available on additional blockchain platforms in a bid to allow users to benefit from the speed, scalability, and cost-efficiency provided by next-generation public chains.