Circle announced on September 10 that it will discontinue support for USDC and CCTP V1 on the Noble blockchain, part of a broader transition to CCTP V2, the company's newer cross-chain transfer protocol built for faster finality and stronger security. Noble will not receive CCTP V2 support, which means the chain's connection to Circle's native USDC infrastructure has a fixed end date rather than an upgrade path.
New minting of USDC on Noble through Circle Mint stops October 13, 2026. Redemptions from Noble via Circle Mint remain available until January 12, 2027, when the Noble USDC contract and all CCTP routes will be fully paused. Circle said all USDC on Noble remains redeemable 1:1 throughout the process.
We are discontinuing support for USDC and CCTP V1 on the Noble blockchain as part of our broader transition to CCTP V2, a next-generation cross-chain protocol with faster finality and stronger security.
— Circle (@circle) September 10, 2026
Noble will not receive CCTP V2.
New minting of USDC on Noble via Circle… pic.twitter.com/clyzaRdqfa
What happens between now and the January pause
The wind-down runs on a staged timeline. From September 10 through October 12, 2026, Circle Mint customers see no change to their Noble access, with withdrawals, express routes, and redemptions continuing as normal. From October 13 through January 12, 2027, new minting to Noble is disabled while redemptions remain available, though CCTP V1 burn limits begin reducing toward zero starting October 31, 2026. After January 13, 2027, Noble becomes inaccessible via Circle Mint or CCTP entirely, and affected customers must contact their Circle Partner Manager or Customer Care team to begin manual redemption.
Institutional and self-custody USDC holders on Noble face the same underlying deadline but different mechanics. Circle instructed holders to move USDC off Noble before the January 12 pause using a centralized exchange that supports Noble USDC deposits, a decentralized exchange swap on Noble, or a CCTP V1 burn to another supported chain. Circle said it will publish a shortlist of known exit venues but is not operating its own exit interface, placing the execution burden on holders and third-party platforms rather than a Circle-built tool.
Why CCTP V2 matters enough to sunset an entire chain integration
Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol allows USDC to move between blockchains through a native burn-and-mint mechanism rather than through wrapped or bridged representations. CCTP V1 launched in 2023 and became one of the more widely adopted interoperability standards in the stablecoin sector because it avoids the custodial and security risks associated with third-party bridge contracts, which have been a frequent target of major DeFi hacks. Wormhole lost over $320 million in a bridge exploit in February 2022, and Ronin Bridge lost over $600 million the following month, both incidents that reinforced why native issuance and burn mechanisms carry less systemic risk than wrapped-asset bridges.
CCTP V2, which Circle introduced in 2025, added faster finality and what the company describes as stronger security, though Circle's public technical documentation has not detailed the specific architectural differences that necessitated leaving certain older chain integrations behind rather than upgrading them in place. The decision to exclude Noble from V2 support, rather than maintain V1 indefinitely alongside V2 elsewhere, suggests Circle is consolidating its cross-chain infrastructure around a smaller set of chains that can support the newer protocol's requirements, rather than maintaining parallel V1 and V2 systems across its entire chain footprint.
Noble's role in the Cosmos ecosystem and what its removal means
Noble is a blockchain built specifically as native USDC issuance infrastructure within the Cosmos IBC ecosystem, launched in 2023 as a joint effort involving Circle, Strangelove, and the broader Cosmos developer community. Its purpose was to give Cosmos-based chains, which use the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol rather than EVM-compatible bridges, direct access to natively issued USDC instead of wrapped or bridged versions. Before Noble's launch, USDC access within Cosmos required routing through wrapped tokens with additional counterparty risk.
Circle stated its broader presence in the Cosmos ecosystem continues despite the Noble discontinuation. Injective and other IBC-connected chains remain active Circle partnerships, and USDC continues to serve as a settlement asset across Cosmos DeFi more broadly. This distinction matters: Circle is not exiting Cosmos, it is removing one specific chain's native issuance role while keeping USDC accessible through other IBC-connected integrations.
CCTP integrators must act before the same January deadline
Applications that integrated CCTP V1 support for Noble routes need to remove Noble as a supported route before January 12, 2027. After that date, all CCTP V1 routes to and from Noble will be fully paused, and any integration still relying on those routes will stop functioning without warning beyond what Circle has already published. Circle directed developers to its documentation and CCTP domain status pages for technical guidance.
Post-deadline holders who missed the transition window face a more constrained recovery path. Circle will take a snapshot of all remaining USDC on Noble balances on the pause date and open a manual redemption portal beginning January 13, 2027. To qualify, holders must meet Circle's compliance and security requirements, hold USDC in a holder-controlled wallet rather than an intermediary-controlled address, and have a wallet address captured in the pause-day snapshot. Circle explicitly warned users to rely only on its blog and Help Center for redemption instructions, a caution that reflects the well-documented pattern of phishing operations that target users during token migrations and deprecation events, when confusion about official channels creates an opening for scam sites impersonating the legitimate process.
Gunel Ismayilova
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