USD Coin (USDC) distributor company Circle Internet Financial said in a blog post on Tuesday that after chain integrations, only Ethereum (ETH) Announced that it will support the Proof of Stake chain.
“USDC Will Only Work on Mainnet Ethereum Network”
The integration, called Merge, is expected to take place in the third or fourth quarter of this year, with a completion date of December 19. Circle will integrate its existing Ethereum mainnet with a new proof-of-stake consensus layer called Beacon Chain.
The currently existing mainnet uses the Proof of Stake mechanism.
However, Proof of Work has been criticized for the environmental effects of high energy use. The Proof of Stake chain is expected to help Circle reduce its energy consumption.
Following the decision to only support the Proof of Stake chain, Circle said in its blog post that it “does not expect disruptions to USDC on-chain capabilities or our fully automated issuance and refund services.”
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Circle previously wrote that users are not required to do anything with their funds and wallets and are not expected to upgrade before Merge.
Circle said, “Although we do not make any predictions about the probability of fork post-Ethereum Mainnet merger, as an ETH asset USDC can only exist as one valid ‘version’,” he added.
The announcement comes just days after ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin found the long-term adoption probability of the ETH Proof of Work fork low after the transition to the Proof of Stake chain.
The company also announced the latest testnet plan for the final trial in the Proof of Stake migration:
“Circle’s test environment is connected to the Goerli ETH testnet and we will be watching closely as it merges with Prater in the coming days.”
If no issues arise during the final testnet, the developers will work on the final phase of the Proof of Stake mainnet merger.
*Not investment advice.