Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-08-04
Form Type: DRS
Source: 0000950123-25-006942
Chunk: 210

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-08-04
Form: DRS
Chunk 210
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lines the deployment, monitoring, and administration of smart contracts across multiple different blockchain networks. When combined with Circle Wallets, Circle Contracts unlocks the creativity of developers to safely build highly sophisticated applications, while also giving them access to libraries of out-of-the-box smart contract templates that are common to payment applications using USDC, as well as other popular features such as issuing and managing NFTs. Combined, these offerings also enable financial services firms to more easily build “tokenization” applications for existing financial assets, and integrate those into their existing online products.

| • |     | Circle Paymaster. A frequent challenge that developers and end-users face when interacting with onchain                                                                                                                                             
 apps is paying for gas fees—transaction costs essential for blockchain networks. Traditionally, users must acquire and hold blockchain-specific native tokens, such as ETH or SOL, to pay these fees, creating friction and complexity. Users often 
 find themselves handling multiple assets, which can lead to operational hurdles and diminished user experiences.                                                                                                                                    |

To address these challenges, we introduced Paymaster, an onchain smart contract that allows developers and end-users to pay these fees in USDC instead of the blockchain’s native tokens. Paymaster can be integrated by 128

CONFIDENTIAL TREATMENT REQUESTED BY CIRCLE INTERNET GROUP, INC. PURSUANT TO 17 C.F.R. § 200.83 developers without requiring special permissions, making the technology broadly accessible and significantly enhancing interoperability within the blockchain ecosystem. By facilitating effortless use of USDC for gas payments across various blockchains, Paymaster advances Circle’s broader mission to foster global economic prosperity through frictionless value exchange. Paymaster simplifies the user experience by eliminating the need for users to maintain balances of multiple volatile native tokens. We pre-fund Paymaster smart contracts with the blockchain’s native tokens, automatically covering gas fees when end-users execute blockchain transactions through developer applications. Concurrently, the Paymaster smart contract receives reimbursement in USDC from developers or end-users. To maintain liquidity, Paymaster periodically and automatically rebalances its token reserves, converting accrued USDC back into native tokens. Paymaster has launched on Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Polygon PoS, and Unichain, with more blockchains expected in the future. The service aligns closely with Circle’s existing blockchain infrastructure solutions, such as CCTP and Circle Gas Station.

| • |     | Circle CCTP. As blockchain applications grow and blockchain networks compete for developers and end-users,                                                                                                                                              
 it has