USDC, Axelar’s new protocol has bridge-free cross-chain swaps; does away with bridged tokens

The decentralized, permissionless cross-chain platform Axelar and USDC creator Circle have announced the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which looks to revolutionize cross-chain transfers across the crypto industry.

Jason Ma from Axelar stated that “we finally have real programmable money.”

USDC will be able to be transferred cross-chain without the need for either wrapped tokens or assets being held at a cross-chain bridge.

Bridges are notorious for having been subject to significant exploits in the past. Two of the largest bridges to be drained of funds were the Binance BSC bridge and the Ronin Bridge. The combined value of funds initially removed from the two platforms topped $1 trillion.

Jason Ma from Axelar exclusively told CrytoSlate that this update impacts all crypto users in that,

“LPs never hold bridged assets. This removes the biggest point of friction we’ve encountered when talking to blue-chip DeFi apps. There is only some risk for the users over a small window of time.”

In terms of use cases, the CCTP addition allows for myriad options for cross-chain swaps. A token swap can be routed through USDC on one chain and then seamlessly transferred to another chain, where it is routed to the desired token on the new chain. In this scenario, no tokens are held in bridges, and no subsequent wrapped version of the token is on the final chain.

The update to USDC also allows for cross-chain NFTs as a part of the new partnership with Axelar’s General Message Passing technology.