Circle and Unstoppable Domains to introduce username-based USDC payments
The bid to introduce human-readable as an alternative to the usual lengthy alphanumeric crypto wallet address system is set to achieve another milestone following the recent partnership between Circle and Unstoppable Domains.
According to an announcement issued on Wednesday, Unstoppable Domains, a blockchain domain name provider, and USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle are collaborating to release readable .coin usernames for USDC transfers.
As part of the partnership, both companies will collaborate to enable support for .coin username extensions across wallets and crypto exchanges that support the popular stablecoin.
Under this arrangement, USDC transfers will become akin to sending an email, likely mitigating the problem of transferring coins to the wrong address, especially for the not-so-tech-savvy.
Indeed, the announcement quoted Josh Hawkings, senior vice president of marketing at Circle making a similar point adding that the feature will help to make USDC more accessible.
Commenting on the partnership, Unstoppable Domains CEO Matthew Gould said: “Simple usernames combined with dollar-pegged stablecoins take the fear and risk out of spending crypto.”
Related: Unstoppable Domains’ .crypto websites now available via Brave browser
The Circle partnership comes swiftly on the heels of a similar collaboration with popular crypto wallet provider Blockchain.com. In June, Cointelegraph reported that Blockchain.com was integrating Unstoppable Domains’ human-readable username feature to enable crypto transfer to other supported wallets and exchanges, including MyEtherWallet and Coinbase, among others.
Unstoppable Domains has reportedly sold over one million crypto-related domain names across contextual extensions such as .crypto, .nft and .coin, among others. In May, privacy-focused browser platform Brave announced support for Unstoppable Domains, a move that enabled seamless access to .crypto domains for its users.
With a Cloudfare integration going online back in February, major mainstream browsers have begun integrating with Unstoppable Domains, including Opera which expanded its .crypto support for all its browser platforms, both web and mobile back in April.