Legacy USDC integrations face shrinking capacity ahead of Dec. 1, while Circle plans to keep pending redemptions available during the wind-down.

Circle plans to begin winding down the legacy version of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP V1) on Oct. 31, leaving applications that still use it facing tighter USDC transfer limits before a planned Dec. 1 contract pause. As of Oct. 29, 2026, both milestones remain ahead.

The immediate pressure is on applications' transfer capacity. Circle's published schedule calls for lower burn limits from Oct. 31, followed by a gradual decline in performance. Once the contracts are paused, integrations still pointing to CCTP V1 will stop transferring USDC between blockchains, the company says.

CCTP transfers USDC by burning it on a source blockchain and minting it on the destination blockchain. A burn limit caps how much can enter that process. An attestation is Circle's signed approval for burned USDC to be minted on the destination chain.

The transition itself is older than the approaching deadline. Circle announced the move away from V1 on Nov. 14, 2025 and published the October-to-December timetable on Aug. 27, 2026.

Circle's migration guide describes progressively tighter message limits until no new burns can be initiated. Transfer volume is intended to reach zero before contracts are fully paused. That makes the staged phase-out relevant to an application's ability to keep routing transfers throughout November, as well as at the final cutoff.

Pending redemptions receive different treatment. Circle says they will remain available during the phase-out and that it will maintain minting allowances above the total of pending attestations, so redemptions can be processed before the full pause.

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