Circle Drops Gateway Barrier for Smart Contract Wallets

Circle has eliminated one of the pain points in the USDC ecosystem by adding support for ERC-1271 to its Gateway service. This means smart contract wallets can now directly sign and manage USDC balances without needing a delegate account as an intermediary.

Gateway is Circle's cross-chain infrastructure layer that provides users with a unified, non-custodial USDC balance accessible across multiple blockchains in under 500 milliseconds. However, its burn intents mechanism required signatures from externally owned accounts (EOAs), which smart contract wallets couldn't produce natively.

ERC-1271 solves this problem by establishing a standard way for smart contracts to verify signatures. Over 50 protocols already use it, including Uniswap. Circle's adoption means Gateway now speaks the same language as the broader smart contract ecosystem.