Circle ends USDC on Noble; Cosmos must shift $92M to Injective

Circle announced it will cease new USDC issuance on the Noble appchain on Oct. 13 and keep redemptions open until Jan. 12, 2027. Burn limits on the legacy Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP V1) start stepping down on Oct. 31 and will reach zero when Noble support ends in January.

On-chain data show Noble holds about $102.2 million in stablecoins, with more than 90% denominated in USDC — roughly $92 million. Noble had acted as a central issuance point that distributed Circle-issued USDC across more than 50 Cosmos-linked chains using the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC).

Cosmos Labs coordinated a replacement routing through Injective, where Circle already issues native USDC that can travel across Cosmos with IBC and CCTP V2. A routing service called Skip:Go will open Sept. 11 to migrate balances displayed as USDC.n on Noble into Injective-issued USDC (USDC.inj). The flow requires a user to select USDC.n as the source and USDC.inj as the destination, sign one transaction on the origin chain and another on Injective, while a Skip relayer performs the intermediate CCTP steps.

Operational deadlines will narrow available exit paths before the January cutoff. After Oct. 31, legacy CCTP burn capacity declines and some destination chains may stop accepting V1 burns after Dec. 1. Circle said users can also exit via centralized exchanges that continue to accept Noble deposits or by swapping on Noble decentralized exchanges, although exchange access has already narrowed: Coinbase stopped Noble USDC deposits and withdrawals on Aug. 17.

Circle plans to snapshot remaining Noble USDC balances on Jan. 12 and open a manual redemption process on Jan. 13. Only balances held in wallets controlled by users at the snapshot that meet Circle’s compliance and security checks will qualify. USDC locked inside liquidity pools or smart contracts at the snapshot will not be eligible for that backstop.

Decentralized exchanges and infrastructure teams are preparing for the change. Osmosis and other DEXs are creating markets for USDC.inj, and developers must update wallets, explorers and routing logic to recognize Injective-issued USDC and ensure IBC relayers to Injective are in place. Cosmos Labs advised holders and services to migrate before Oct. 31 rather than rely on the January deadline.