Aptos demonstrates significant ecosystem growth, with over 200 active applications and a tenfold increase in DeFi activity during the past year.
The transition from bridged lzUSDC to native USDC will be gradually implemented through collaboration with LayerZero-based bridge providers.
USDC’s expansion continues with 78% year-over-year circulation growth in 2024, positioning it as the fastest-growing major stablecoin.
In a recent update, Circle that its native stablecoin has gone live on the Layer-1 Aptos mainnet. As a result of this new development, developers and users would not need bridging when performing a transaction. Generally, this integration makes it easy for financial institutions to access liquidity and benefit from Aptos’s fast and secure network.
Aptos to Build the Future of Finance With Circle
Aptos prides itself as an L1 protocol that delivers secure, scalable, and upgradeable Web3 infrastructure to users.
Last year, it recorded a 10 times growth in its (DeFi) ecosystem. Crucial to this growth was the blockchain’s capacity to provide developers with the infrastructure needed to support the next generation of payment solutions and DeFi applications for mainstream adoption.
Developers on Aptos can build apps for a variety of use cases. These use cases cut across DeFi, peer-to-peer payments, cross-border remittances, global commerce, RWAs, gaming, and more. With 2025 only one month gone, the Aptos ecosystem has recorded over 200 apps on its platform, with more coming onboard.
The arrival and integration of USDC into the Aptos ecosystem allows developers to build with Circle, which prides itself on being the world’s largest regulated dollar stablecoin. Together, they could deliver the future of finance, Circle suggested in its blog post.
Moving From Bridged to Native USDC
For Circle, the goal of bringing USDC natively to new blockchains is largely to provide developers with a trustworthy, stable foundation to build.
Circle officially issues this form of stablecoin, which is redeemable 1:1 for USD. Before now, Aptos had a bridged form of USDC known as lzUSDC. Markedly, lzUSDC is USDC bridged from Ethereum through the AptosBridge built on LayerZero.
Contextually, it is neither issued by Circle nor compatible with or redeemable with Circle Mint. The growth of lzUSDC on Aptos has been the responsibility of LayerZero-based bridge providers like Stargate.
Consequently, these bridge providers will collaborate with the Aptos team to migrate users from lzUSDC to native USDC. It is worth noting that this will be a gradual process carried out over a period of time.
Wormhole and other bridge providers will utilize the Aptos Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to support developers and users who transfer their USDC natively between blockchains. At the same time, Circle noted that USDC on Aptos will be supported on Coinbase in the near future.
USDC Records Massive Surge in Circulation
In addition to this development, USDC has gained significant traction this past year. The dollar-pegged stablecoin in year-over-year circulation in 2024. This was notable as USDC surpassed the growth of all other major stablecoins in the same period.
According to Circle CEO and co-founder Jeremy Allaire, the report “charts USDC’s evolution into a platform for global prosperity. USDC has become a crucial bridge between traditional and digital finance, enabling real-time, low-cost value exchange that expands economic opportunity on a global scale.”
It has started the new year strongly and may eventually claim at this rate.
