$USDC ✅ Current Main Use Cases of USDC (Mid 2025)

1. Fundamental Stable Asset in DeFi Protocols

• As collateral for lending platforms (like Aave, Compound).

• Providing liquidity pairs in DEXs (Uniswap, Curve, Balancer).

• Commonly used in stablecoin pools (like USDC/DAI/USDT) to earn transaction fee income and liquidity mining rewards.

👉 USDC is one of the most widely used stablecoins on L2s like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

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2. Transfers and Cross-Chain Bridges

• Using protocols like LayerZero, Wormhole, Axelar to transfer from the Ethereum chain to other chains like Solana, Base, Polygon.

• Circle launched a native cross-chain transfer protocol [CCTP (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol)] that allows burning and minting USDC natively, reducing the risks of traditional bridges.

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3. Web3 Payments and Business Integration

• Various Web3 applications have supported the use of USDC as a payment currency (like Magic Eden, OpenSea).

• Traditional e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Visa have started integrating Circle's API to accept USDC.

• USDC on Solana is widely used for instant payments and as currency in games for GameFi.

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4. Institutional Use and Reserve Asset

• USDC is issued by Circle and in partnership with Coinbase, backed by comprehensive financial reports from the U.S. and audits.

• High stability and transparency, used by some DAOs and Web3 protocols as treasury reserve assets (for example, MakerDAO converting part of its DAI reserves to USDC).