Coinbase Launches USD Coin 2.0 To Delegate Gas Fees

The latest Coinbase news show that as the Ethereum fees continue to climb, cryptocurrency companies are looking for viable alternatives which would bring the cost of transfers back to some acceptable levels. Now, we can see that Coinbase launches USD Coin 2.0 as the new and revamped version of its stablecoin with which it plans to delegate gas fees.

The Centre Consortium members Circle and Coinbase have just launched the upgraded version of their popular USDC and dollar-pegged stablecoin. As it went live on August 27, USDC 2.0 is meant to tackle high gas fees by allowing developers to delegate it to other wallets or take their fees in USDC instead.

In the official announcement, Coinbase said that most users need to keep a balance of Ether in their wallets in order to make transactions. It also added that this resulted in unnecessary complexity, stating:

“This complexity presents a barrier to mainstream adoption and broad usage of digital dollar stablecoins for internet payments.”

USDC 2.0 will introduce what it terms as “gasless sends” which enables wallet developers to ‘abstract away’ the complexity of the gas fees, but also delegate the payment of gas fees to another address instead, which negates the need for users to hold balances of ETH.

Developers could now either pay the fees on behalf of their clients, or allow a third-party service that will take the burden. The aim with this is very clear as the Ethereum news show – to remove Ethereum from the equation and enable users to send as well as receive USDC payments by using USDC, and with fees expressed and paid in USDC.

According to Coinbase, USDC has an active market capitalization of $1.4 billion and is handling more than $90 billion in its on-chain transaction volume. As Coinbase launches USD Coin 2.0, the aim is to delegate gas fees all while ETH fees are retreating. However, Ethereum network fees are still at their highest levels for over two years, even though they have fallen a little over in the past two weeks.

ETH Gas Station reports that the biggest producer of network fees is Uniswap with $12.7 million over the past 30 days, and Tether is second with 10.5 million dollars in fees generated.