On Jan. 15, the Chainlink team announced that the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol v1.5 upgrade was now live on mainnet for all developers.

The upgrade empowers developers to take their tokens cross-chain “in a self-serve manner” and deploy Cross-Chain Tokens (CCTs) across more than twenty blockchains in minutes, it added.

CCIP is a secure and easy-to-use protocol for transferring tokens and messages across various blockchains.

New Chainlink CCT Standard

The CCIP v1.5 introduces the Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard, explained Chainlink. The new standard offers developers “full control and ownership, enhanced programmability, and zero-slippage transfers,” it added.

“CCIP v1.5 marks a major upgrade to the CCIP developer experience, making it easier than ever to onboard new or existing tokens to the CCT standard and integrate CCIP into cross-chain applications.”

It stated that CCTs do not require developers to inherit any CCIP-specific code within their token’s smart contract, and they can deploy pre-audited coin pool contracts to turn any ERC-20-compatible asset into a CCT.

The upgrade also includes a CCIP Token Manager which provides a streamlined user interface for developers to launch and manage CCTs.

The Chainlink CCIP v1.5 upgrade is now live on mainnet for all developers.

This release empowers devs to take their tokens cross-chain in a self-serve manner, deploy Cross-Chain Tokens (CCTs) across 20+ blockchains in minutes, much more.

Full details ↓ pic.twitter.com/9xzahbZVzb

Developers can also manage CCT deployments with “Smart Accounts,” which will require approvals from multiple owners to authorize transactions, it added.

CCIP will also help increase access to bridged USDC to “help prevent liquidity fragmentation and accelerate DeFi adoption across the multi-chain ecosystem,” it stated.

Chainlink community ambassador Zach Rynes tested out the system, reporting that he created a Cross-Chain Token called CLG in a couple of minutes and transferred it between layer-2 networks Base and Arbitrum.

Chainlink CCIP v1.5 is awesome

I just created a Cross-Chain Token called $CLG in a couple minutes and transferred it between @base and @arbitrum

Fully permissionless and no coding required, just used the new CCIP Token Manager to create the token and @transporter_io to… pic.twitter.com/ptpLlVWd17

In early January, Chainlink partnered with Ripple to accelerate the adoption of the cross-border payments firm’s stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD).

LINK Prices Up

The protocol’s native token, LINK, gained around 6% on the day to reach an intraday high of $20.60 during early trading in Asia on Wednesday.

Like most altcoins, LINK has taken a beating over the past month, falling around 30% from its mid-December high of just over $30.

According to Santiment, whales have bought 1.35 million LINK over the past 24 hours, pushing its price back to resistance at $20 following a dip to $18.24 on Monday.

The next resistance zone to overcome is around the $24 level, where LINK last tapped on Jan. 6.