From Saturday 31 October, Circle starts shrinking the amount of USDC that can move through the first version of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, CCTP V1, now labelled “Legacy”. The limits fall gradually for about a month, and on 1 December Circle pauses the V1 contracts, according to a migration notice Circle published on 27 August. Any wallet, bridge or app still sending USDC through Circle CCTP V1 after that date stops moving it between chains.
The deadline is not new. Circle announced the retirement of V1 in November 2025 and set these dates on 27 August, weeks before the Binance security incident of 29 October; none of Circle’s notices, nor The Defiant’s report on the first step, links the two. What changes on Saturday is that the cuts start: through November, less and less USDC fits through the old route.
USDC already held on a supported chain is not affected. Only the V1 transfer route between chains closes, plus one whole network, Noble on Cosmos, which loses Circle’s support altogether in January.
What changes on 31 October and 1 December
Circle’s wording is blunt: “Migration from CCTP V1 (Legacy) to CCTP V2 is required, not just recommended.” According to its developer migration guide, V1 message limits tighten until no new burns are possible, so transfer volume reaches zero before the contracts are paused. Circle keeps minter allowances above the pending attestations, which means a transfer whose burn has already happened can still be minted on the destination chain before the pause.
Circle has not published the size of the limits or the schedule of the cuts: neither the migration notice nor the developer guide gives a figure. Nor is there a public count of the apps still running on V1, or of how much USDC still flows through it.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 26 April 2023 | CCTP V1 launches |
| 11 March 2025 | CCTP V2 launches |
| 14 November 2025 | Circle makes V2 the canonical version and renames V1 “Legacy” |
| 13 October 2026 | New USDC minting to Noble through Circle Mint stops |
| 31 October 2026 | V1 burn limits start falling toward zero |
| 1 December 2026 | V1 contracts paused; V1 integrations stop moving USDC cross-chain |
| 12 January 2027 | Noble USDC contract and CCTP routes paused, balance snapshot taken |
| 13 January 2027 | Manual redemption for remaining Noble balances begins |
How Circle CCTP works: burn on one chain, mint on the other
Most cross-chain bridges lock a token on one chain and issue a wrapped copy on another. CCTP works differently. The sender burns native USDC on the source chain, Circle’s attestation service signs a message confirming the burn, and the same amount of native USDC is minted on the destination chain. No smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool of locked tokens sits in the middle, and the receiver gets real USDC rather than an IOU.
Circle counted more than $110 billion of cumulative volume and over 5.3 million transfers across V1 and V2 as of 14 November 2025, in its post announcing V2 as canonical. At the time V1 ran on 11 chains and V2 on 17. Circle’s August notice puts V2 on 27 blockchains, with Standard and Fast Transfer and programmable “hooks”. The November post also raised V2’s transaction limit from $1 million to $10 million.
What developers and apps have to change
V2 is not backward compatible: it uses separate contracts and APIs. The developer guide lists the main breaks:
- replaceDepositForBurn is removed, and the guide says it has no V2 equivalent.
- depositForBurnWithCaller is removed; the destinationCaller parameter of depositForBurn replaces it.
- depositForBurn now needs destinationCaller, maxFee and minFinalityThreshold, set to 1000 for Fast Transfer and 2000 for Standard Transfer.
- API calls move to the /v2/ endpoints, and Fast Transfer carries a variable fee.
On Stellar, inbound transfers need Circle’s CctpForwarder contract. The guide says V2 contracts exist on every chain that had V1 except Noble and Sui, and that Sui is due to receive V2 before the deprecation begins; we could not confirm on 30 October whether that has happened. Circle’s warning for teams that do nothing: “Failure to migrate will eventually result in loss of crosschain capabilities for your integration.”
For people who move USDC through a wallet or a bridge front end, the practical step is simpler: finish any V1 transfer well before 1 December, and check that the app has announced its move to V2.
Noble and the Cosmos holders: about $92 million to move before 12 January
Noble is the Cosmos chain that issued native USDC for the Cosmos world, and it gets no second version. “Noble will not receive CCTP V2,” Circle wrote in its 10 September announcement. Minting of new USDC to Noble through Circle Mint stopped on 13 October. From 31 October, Noble’s V1 burn limits fall like everyone else’s. After 1 December, Circle says CCTP exits from Noble may be limited to destination chains that still accept V1 burns.
The hard stop for Noble comes later. On 12 January 2027 Circle Mint redemptions from Noble end, Circle takes a snapshot of balances and pauses the Noble USDC contract and its CCTP routes. From 13 January, holders left in the snapshot can ask for a manual redemption through Circle’s Partner Manager or Customer Care, provided they control the wallet and pass compliance checks. The full Noble pause is in January, not on 1 December, as some reports suggest.
CryptoSlate estimated in September that about $92 million of USDC was affected, with Noble holding about $102.2 million of stablecoins, more than 90% of it USDC, according to DefiLlama. Coinbase stopped Noble USDC deposits and withdrawals on 17 August. Noble itself reported more than $22 billion of volume since 2023 and about 30,000 monthly users.
Circle lists three ways out before January: a centralised exchange that still accepts Noble USDC, a swap on a decentralised exchange on Noble, or a CCTP V1 burn to another chain while limits last. It will publish a list of known exit venues, will not build its own exit tool, and warns users about scams. Since 11 September, holders on dYdX, Osmosis, Cosmos Hub, Terra 2.0, Neutron, ZIGChain, XPLA and Initia can swap USDC.n for USDC.inj, the native USDC Circle issues on Injective, through Skip:Go, CryptoSlate reported. Cosmos Labs urged users to migrate before 31 October.
For EU holders, the rules on USDC do not move
In the European Union, USDC is an e-money token under MiCA, issued by Circle’s EU entity, and holders’ redemption rights come from that status, not from the bridge used to move the tokens. Closing CCTP V1 does not change them. The supervision of USDC’s reserves is shifting for other reasons: the European Banking Authority takes over from 12 November. Our profile of Circle and USDC covers how the issuer makes money and what backs the token.
What to watch in November
After Saturday’s first cut, the markers to watch are Circle’s promised list of Noble exit venues, any notice from bridges or wallets that they are still on V1, and the Noble snapshot on 12 January 2027. As of 30 October, we found no public report of an app hit by the new limits.