Circle Opens CCTP to Third-Party Tokens, Joining the Cross-Chain Standard Battle

Circle has opened the largest cross-chain channel in the market, but will other issuers be willing to hand over the cross-chain lifeline to it?

Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News

On November 2, Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire tweeted that the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is now open to all token issuers, calling it a "significant unlocking" for asset issuers. On October 30, Circle published a guide on its developer blog explaining how ERC-20 token issuers can access CCTP.

CCTP was launched in April 2023, primarily serving USDC. According to DefiLlama data, from January 2024 to November 2, 2026, the cumulative cross-chain volume of CCTP reached $18.205 billion; as of November 3, its cross-chain volume in the past 30 days was $1.761 billion, ranking first among cross-chain bridges tracked by DefiLlama (the total volume of all cross-chain bridges during the same period was $48.76 billion), with LayerZero in second place at $12.48 billion.

Before the release of the third-party guide, the non-USDC assets on CCTP were mainly Circle's own cirBTC, EURC, and WETH. According to Circle's tweet, by mid-October, the cumulative cross-chain volume of these assets had just exceeded $100 million.

Two Months: From USDC Dedicated Line to Public Channel

The expansion of CCTP has concentrated in the last two months: On September 2, Circle's euro stablecoin EURC accessed CCTP; on September 16, Circle's self-built public chain Arc launched its mainnet; on September 23, the Bitcoin-backed token cirBTC was integrated; and on October 30, the third-party access guide was published. During the same period, the old version of CCTP V1 used by USDC began to gradually reduce its limits starting October 31, with the contract set to pause on December 1, requiring developers to migrate to V2 before then.

The underlying verification mechanism has not changed: after tokens are destroyed or locked on the source chain, a proof is issued by Circle's signature service Iris, allowing the target chain to mint or unlock an equivalent amount of tokens based on the proof. Third-party tokens follow a separate entry contract, with speed limits, single transaction caps, and suspension rights executed by independent management contracts for each token; cross-chain transaction fees must be inquired about individually from Iris and paid in native gas tokens on the source chain.

ERC-20 tokens that have been issued do not need to migrate chains upon access and can be configured for "custom connections": issuers can choose to mint after destruction (granting minting permissions to the CCTP management contract) or unlock after locking on the original chain, while all other chains must mint after destruction; ownership, suspension permissions, and speed limits are set by the issuer, with Circle stating in the documentation that it has no authority to take over.

New tokens can be directly deployed as native cross-chain tokens by the protocol. Assets like WETH, which do not involve the issuer, follow a "no-owner connection," locking on the original chain and minting wrapped tokens on other chains, with no speed limits set by default; Circle can take over in special circumstances such as security incidents.

Signatures Centrally Handled by Circle

In terms of cross-chain methods, mainstream cross-chain bridges can be roughly divided into two categories.

One category includes token standards and messaging protocols, which destroy or lock tokens on the source chain at the contract level and mint them on the target chain. CCTP, LayerZero's OFT, Wormhole's NTT, and Chainlink's CCIP-based CCT all belong to this category; the other category includes intent and liquidity bridges like Across and Relay, where market makers advance funds on the target chain without requiring issuer participation. CCTP's opening to third parties directly competes with the former category.

In terms of asset models, these token standards do not differ much: new tokens are minted after destruction, and if the original chain contract is not modified, they are locked on the original chain and minted on other chains, with issuers retaining speed limits and suspension rights when configuring themselves.

The core difference lies in who confirms the destruction or locking on the source chain: OFT allows issuers to choose their own DVN verification network combinations, while issuers like USDT0, Ondo, and PayPal may run their own DVNs; Wormhole relies on at least 13 signatures from 19 Guardian nodes; Chainlink's default verification network consists of a committee of 16 node operators, with additional verifiers possible; CCTP's signatures come from Circle's Iris.

The configuration of verifiers directly affects asset security. On April 18, 2026, KelpDAO's rsETH cross-chain bridge based on OFT was attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $292 million. According to LayerZero's statement, KelpDAO had only configured one DVN from LayerZero Labs at that time, and the attacker compromised the RPC node used by that DVN, forging cross-chain messages. KelpDAO subsequently switched to Chainlink CCIP.

Risk assessment agency LlamaRisk mentioned in an assessment published in September 2026 on the Aave governance forum that CCTP's signature threshold is 2/2, with all signers controlled by Circle; the CrossChainTokenService on Arc is an upgradeable contract without multi-signature or time locks, and the management contracts of each token must parse the code through it when called. In other words, the parameters for custom connections are set by the issuer, while the upgrade rights of the underlying contracts remain with Circle.

OFT's verifiers can be configured by the issuer, with no limits; CCTP does not require or allow issuers to configure verifiers, relying entirely on Circle's Iris. For USDC holders, this does not introduce new trust entities; however, for other issuers, accessing CCTP means handing over cross-chain verification to Circle alone.

Issuers May Not Be Eager to Switch Bridges

Although CCTP's cross-chain volume ranks first, it is almost entirely from USDC itself. Beyond USDC, many large issuers have already adopted other standards.

According to a post by LayerZero in June 2026, 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, the Canadian dollar stablecoin CADC also announced its adoption of OFT.

USDT's cross-chain also follows OFT. USDT0 was launched by Everdawn Labs based on OFT, corresponding 1:1 with USDT, and Tether strategically invested in LayerZero Labs in February 2026.

Since its launch, USDT0's cumulative trading volume surpassed $100 billion in June 2026; DefiLlama shows its cross-chain volume in the past 30 days was $2.9 billion. Tokens that have adopted OFT would need to reconfigure contracts and minting permissions on each chain if they switch to CCTP.

Issuers are not averse to switching bridges. KelpDAO switched from LayerZero OFT to Chainlink CCIP after the rsETH attack. As for intent bridges like Across and Relay, their cross-chain volumes in the past 30 days were $5.67 billion and $4.65 billion, respectively, but they can only transfer tokens already existing on the target chain, which does not affect issuers' choices of token standards.

Coverage is also a limitation. According to Circle's announcement in August, CCTP V2 used by USDC supports 27 chains; 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 chains. In contrast, LayerZero disclosed in June 2026 that OFT tokens have covered over 170 chains.

With verification concentrated in Circle alone, non-USDC tokens can only circulate among a few EVM chains, while many large issuers have been operating on OFT for some time, making the current reasons for switching to CCTP insufficient for them.

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