PANews reported on March 11 that according to The Block, Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin USDC, announced a protocol update on Tuesday, saying it would reduce cross-chain settlement time from several minutes to a few seconds. The company's newly launched Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol V2 (CCTP V2) will improve on CCTP V1 and use "a new set of smart contracts and APIs" to reduce the "average 13 to 19 minutes for typical blockchain transactions" between Ethereum and Layer 2 blockchains to just a few seconds.

Circle said CCTP V2 will initially be available to developers building on Avalanche, Base, and Ethereum, but plans to add support for more blockchains throughout the year. "CCTP V1 will continue to be available on 11 blockchains," Circle said, adding that "CCTP has facilitated more than $36 billion in transaction volume" since its launch in 2023. Some of the new features of CCTP V2 highlighted by Circle on Tuesday include "Hooks," which it said allows developers to "automate post-transfer operations on target blockchains."