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Circle Unveils Paymaster to Allow USDC to Be Used for Transaction Fees

The product allows users to interact with decentralized applications using USDC only, ditching the need for native tokens.

Jan 23, 2025, 3:12 p.m.
Circle set up its own "house" on the Promenade. (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)
(Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)

What to know:

  • Circle introduced Paymaster, which lets users pay transaction fees on Arbitrum and Base with USDC.
  • Paymaster charges a 10% fee on gas cost, currently waived until Jun. 30.

Circle, the issuer of the $48 billion USDC stablecoin, introduced Paymaster, a product allowing users to pay for transaction fees on Arbitrum and Base using the second-biggest stablecoin instead of ether (ETH), the second-biggest cryptocurrency.

Blockchain transactions require users to pay transaction fees that are used to compensate validators for processing and securing these transactions. Different blockchains often use different tokens, forcing users to manage an assortment of tokens across the various chains.

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Paymaster accepts USDC and then handles the native token payments to the blockchain validators, the company said in a blog post.

The service, which is set to expand to Ethereum, Polygon POS, and Solana, charges users 10% of the gas cost for each transaction. The fee is being waived until June 30 to encourage adoption.

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  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

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Foundation behind restaking protocol EigenLayer plans bigger rewards for active users

EigenLayer CEO Sreeram Kannan (University of Michigan, modified by CoinDesk)

An Incentives Committee would direct programmatic token emissions, focusing allocations on participants that secure AVSs and contribute to the EigenCloud ecosystem.

Что нужно знать:

  • The Eigen Foundation has unveiled a governance proposal aimed at ushering in new incentives for its EIGEN token, shifting the protocol’s reward strategy to prioritize productive network activity and fee generation.
  • Under the plan, a newly formed Incentives Committee would manage token emissions, prioritizing participants who secure Actively Validated Services and expand the EigenCloud ecosystem.
  • The proposal includes a fee model that channels revenue from AVS rewards and EigenCloud services back to EIGEN holders, potentially creating deflationary pressure as the ecosystem grows.