Circle has opened the highest-traffic cross-chain channel in the entire market—but are other token issuers willing to cede control of their cross-chain operations to it?
Written by Sanqing, Foresight News
On November 2, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire announced via X that its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is now open to all token issuers, hailing the move as a "major unlock" for asset issuers. On October 30, Circle published a guide on its developer blog detailing how ERC-20 token issuers can integrate with CCTP.
Launched in April 2023, CCTP previously primarily served USDC. Per data from DefiLlama, as of November 2, 2026 (marking the end of the tracking period starting January 2024), CCTP has recorded a cumulative cross-chain transfer volume of $182.05 billion. As of November 3, its trailing 30-day cross-chain volume reached $17.61 billion, ranking first among all cross-chain bridges tracked by DefiLlama (the total volume across all bridges in the same period was $48.76 billion), with LayerZero coming in second with $12.48 billion in volume.
Before the public integration guide was released, non-USDC assets on CCTP were limited primarily to Circle’s own products: cirBTC, EURC, and WETH. Per Circle’s X post disclosures, as of mid-October, the cumulative cross-chain volume of these assets had barely exceeded $100 million.
Two Months: From a Dedicated USDC Channel to a Public Cross-Chain Utility
CCTP’s rapid expansion has unfolded over the past two months: on September 2, Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC was integrated with CCTP; on September 16, Circle’s self-built public blockchain Arc launched its public mainnet; on September 23, Bitcoin-backed token cirBTC was onboarded; and on October 30, the third-party integration guide was published. Over the same period, the legacy CCTP V1 version used for USDC has seen its transfer limits gradually reduced starting October 31, with contracts scheduled to be paused on December 1, requiring all developers to migrate to V2 ahead of that deadline.
The underlying verification mechanism remains unchanged: after tokens are burned or locked on the source chain, Circle-operated signature service Iris issues a proof, based on which an equivalent amount of tokens is minted or unlocked on the destination chain. Third-party tokens use a separate set of entry contracts, where rate limits, per-transaction caps, and pause authority are enforced via each token’s independent management contract. Cross-chain fees are quoted on a per-transaction basis via Iris, and paid in native gas tokens on the source chain.
Existing ERC-20 tokens do not require chain migration to integrate, and can be configured for "custom connection": issuers may choose to burn-and-mint on their native chain (requiring granting minting permissions to the CCTP management contract) or lock-and-unlock for their native chain, while all other connected chains will exclusively use the burn-and-mint model. Ownership, pause permissions, and rate limits are all set by the issuer, with Circle explicitly stating in its documentation that it holds no authority to take over these parameters.
New tokens can be deployed directly as native cross-chain tokens by protocols. Assets without an active issuer (such as WETH) use an "unowned connection" model, where tokens are locked on their native chain and wrapped tokens are minted on other chains. No rate limits are set by default for these connections, and Circle retains the right to take over operations in special circumstances such as security incidents.
All signature verification is fully centralized under Circle.
By cross-chain operating model, mainstream cross-chain bridges can be broadly divided into two categories.
The first category consists of token standards and messaging protocols, which operate at the contract layer to burn or lock tokens on the source chain and mint equivalent tokens on the destination chain. CCTP, LayerZero’s OFT, Wormhole’s NTT, and Chainlink’s CCT built on its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) all fall into this category. The second category includes intent-based liquidity bridges such as Across and Relay, where market makers advance liquidity on the destination chain, requiring no participation from token issuers. CCTP’s opening to third parties puts it in direct competition with projects in the first category.
In terms of asset model, these token standards are largely similar: new tokens use the burn-and-mint model; if issuers do not modify their native chain contracts, tokens are locked on the native chain and minted on other chains, with issuers retaining control over rate limits and pause permissions when self-configuring their setup.
The core difference lies in which party confirms token burn or lock events on the source chain: OFT allows issuers to select their own combination of Decentralized Verifier Network (DVN) nodes, with issuers such as USDT0, Ondo, and PayPal even running their own DVNs; Wormhole relies on signatures from at least 13 of its 19 Guardian nodes; Chainlink’s verification network is default-composed of a committee of 16 node operators, with the option to add additional verifiers; by contrast, all CCTP signatures are generated via Circle-operated Iris.
Verifier configuration directly impacts asset security. On April 18, 2026, KelpDAO’s OFT-based rsETH cross-chain bridge was exploited, resulting in approximately $292 million in losses. Per LayerZero’s official statement, KelpDAO had only configured a single DVN run by LayerZero Labs at the time, allowing attackers to compromise the RPC node used by this DVN and forge cross-chain messages. KelpDAO subsequently migrated to Chainlink CCIP.
An evaluation published by risk assessment firm LlamaRisk on the Aave governance forum in September 2026 noted that CCTP’s signature threshold is set to 2/2, with all signers fully controlled by Circle. The CrossChainTokenService contract on Arc is an upgradeable contract with no multi-sig or time lock, and all token management contracts route through it for code execution during function calls. In other words, while custom connection parameters are set by issuers, the right to upgrade the underlying contract remains exclusively with Circle.
OFT verifiers are configured entirely by issuers, with flexibility to scale the number of verifiers up or down; by contrast, CCTP does not require or allow issuers to configure verifiers, relying entirely on Circle’s Iris. For USDC holders, this setup introduces no new points of trust, but for other token issuers, integrating with CCTP means ceding all cross-chain verification control to a single company: Circle.
Issuers Are in No Hurry to Switch Bridges
While CCTP ranks first in cross-chain volume, nearly all of this volume comes from USDC itself. Outside of USDC, many large issuers have already integrated with competing standards.
Per a June 2026 post from LayerZero, over 830 tokens have adopted the OFT standard, including Tether’s USDT0, Ethena’s USDe, PayPal’s PYUSD, and Ondo’s USDY. In October 2026, Canadian dollar stablecoin CADC also announced it would adopt the OFT standard.
Tether’s cross-chain USDT operations also run on OFT. USDT0, launched by Everdawn Labs based on the OFT standard, is pegged 1:1 to USDT, and Tether also made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs in February 2026.
Previously, USDT0’s cumulative trading volume surpassed $100 billion in June 2026 since its launch. DefiLlama data shows its trailing 30-day cross-chain volume reached $2.9 billion. Tokens already integrated with OFT that choose to switch to CCTP would need to reconfigure contracts and minting permissions across all supported chains.
That said, issuers do occasionally switch bridges. KelpDAO is a case in point: it migrated from LayerZero OFT to Chainlink CCIP after its rsETH exploit. As for intent-based bridges like Across and Relay, their trailing 30-day cross-chain volumes are $5.67 billion and $4.65 billion respectively, but these bridges can only transfer existing tokens on the destination chain, and do not impact issuers’ choice of underlying token standard.
Chain coverage is another limitation. Per Circle’s August announcement, CCTP V2 used for USDC supports 27 blockchains; however, according to Circle’s contract address documentation, non-USDC tokens are currently only deployed on Ethereum, Avalanche, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon PoS, and Arc—all of which are EVM-compatible chains. By contrast, LayerZero disclosed in June 2026 that OFT tokens are already supported on over 170 blockchains.
With verification centralized solely under Circle, non-USDC tokens can only move between a small set of EVM chains, while many large issuers have long-running operations on OFT. For these stakeholders, there is currently insufficient justification to make the switch to CCTP.