Estimating costs of ckUSDC-Stelllar

Developers
1

For an upcoming project, we will need on and off ramping with ckUSDC-Stellar. As the ckStellar canister does not exist yet, we’re going to need to build something ourselves using chain fusion tech. I am trying to estimate a budget for this. Can anyone provide information about the level of effort to do this? I fear it is a massive operation beyond our means, but I am not a developer and don’t understand the complexity. Any information would be greatly appreciated..

2

Hello @BradleyLeapfrog

Few questions before diving in more deeply:

  • Is the project participating in WCHL?
  • Do you need the ckUSDC/Stellar to be maintained by DFinity foundation?
  • Do you have hard requirement for this new ckUSDC token to be ICRC-2 token? What’s the use-case?
3

thanks for the reply.

  • Use case - traceability and payments ERP for deforestation risk supply chains.The first pilots are in Cameroon, PNG and Solomon Islands. We need ckUSDC Stellar due to the offramps in Cameroon and the fact that ckUSDC-Eth has too much friction/fees for offramps in other countries.

  • WCHL - no affilation but open to it

  • Dfnitity maintenance - that would be ideal to lower our burden

4

I’m asking about WCHL for different reasons.

Will send DM for further discussion :slight_smile:

5

That’s actually a very insightful question, and you’re right to think about the scope before diving in.

From a technical standpoint, building an on/off ramp with ckUSDC–Stellar through Chain Fusion isn’t a trivial task, but it’s also not as impossible as it sounds. The Internet Computer’s chain-fusion framework is specifically designed to make direct interoperability between chains like ICP, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and eventually Stellar possible without traditional bridges.

Since ckStellar doesn’t exist yet, the effort would mainly involve deploying a custom canister that mimics the ckToken logic, handling minting, burning, and mapping of Stellar assets (like USDC) on the ICP side, then linking it through the Chain Fusion APIs once Stellar support is activated.

In short, it’s a mid-to-high complexity project, but still within reach for a small dev team familiar with ICP’s SDKs and cross-chain protocols. The heavy lifting will mostly be in smart contract logic, Stellar integration, and testing secure asset transfer flows.

I actually think if you start small, maybe with a test version (ckTestUSDC ↔ Stellar testnet), you can build iteratively while waiting for official ckStellar support. That way, you’ll already have the foundation ready when the full chain fusion rollout happens.