Circle releases v2.2 for USDC and EURC stablecoins with improvements to account abstraction, security, and lower gas fees

Stablecoin issuer Circle launched its v2.2 upgrade for USDC and EURC.

The new features for the two stablecoins include decreased gas costs, better support for account abstraction and increased security for transactions on EVM blockchains, according to a company statement. The last time Circle unveiled upgrades to USDC was in early 2021, the firm added.

“There will be six new changes to the USDC and EURC smart contracts and they’ll be implemented through a single v2.2 upgrade for each supported EVM blockchain. The upgrade is fully backwards-compatible, does not introduce any breaking changes to existing integrations, and requires no action from developers or users,” Circle wrote in the release.

The blockchain security firm Halborn audited all the code changes.

Upgrade roadmap

Further updates include enabling signature validations from smart contract wallets, improvements to checking blocklists, better resilience against forks, removing blocklist checking from functions that don’t move funds, skipped timestamp check when deadline is set to maximum amount, and a one-time rename for the EURC symbol from EUROC, the firm added.

Circle will begin rolling out the v2.2 upgrades on Nov. 9 and plans to finish the updates “the next few months.”