You can now send cryptodollars back and forth without paying a fee to the Ethereum network, according to the Centre Consortium in a Thursday blog post.
Dubbed USDC 2.0, USD Coin (USDC) has integrated what are called "meta transactions" natively to the dollar stablecoin platform. Now, users do not have to pre-fund their USDC-bearing wallets with ether ETH$2,949.79 in order to send a transaction.
Meta transactions allow USDC wallets and compatible applications to act as virtual "gas stations" by paying the associated mining fee that accompanies every Ethereum blockchain transaction.
"This [update] enables people to fund their non-custodial wallets with USDC and start using DeFi/dapps without also having to own ETH," Coinbase developer Peter Jihoon Kim told CoinDesk.
The update is backwards-compatible, meaning old USDC clients can continue using the network without upgrading.
Centre also released a new on-chain signature schematic to help govern the project as new partners join the Coinbase– and Circle-founded project.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market cap at $1.4 billion.
Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
This follows its October 2025 $450 million token sale that was heavily oversubscribed.
What to know:
MegaETH, the much-watched high-performance Ethereum layer-2 network, announced that its public mainnet will go live Feb. 9, marking a major milestone for a project that has gained a lot of attention in the scaling landscape.
MegaETH positions itself as a “real-time” blockchain for Ethereum, designed to deliver ultra-low latency and massive transaction throughput.