Infra Graveyard Weekly #07: Circle is leaving Noble, and 90% of its USDC isn't on Noble

Deprecations and shutdowns in crypto infrastructure, the part a developer has to act on. "Days left" counts from 18 September 2026, and all times are UTC.

1. Which deadlines are closest?

The full board — 32 open deadlines out to September 2028 — lives on the series page.

Closed since #06, each checked at the source. BitMEX settled every remaining derivative on 16.09 at 12:00:00, to the second, per its API. Solana's second rent cut went live on 11.09 at 21:12 UTC, while solana.com still says "Live on Testnet". XRPL enabled fixCleanup3_3_0 on 11.09 at 11:29; servers below xrpld 3.3.0 are now amendment-blocked. Polygon really stopped pushing to DockerHub: three bor releases since 1 September reached only GHCR. Etherscan's API now refuses free calls on Gnosis.

Our board was wrong, in the dangerous direction. On 9 September LayerZero edited its July notice: Stargate v2 now leaves four chains on 23.09, not 30.09. We carried the old date for eleven days. Primary source The same edit added a shutdown for Superposition dated 8 September — one day before it was published.

2. What happens to USDC on Noble when Circle leaves?

Circle announced five dates on 10 September, none with a time of day: new minting on Noble stops on 13.10; CCTP V1 burn limits start shrinking to zero on 31.10; after 01.12 exits may be limited to chains still accepting V1 burns (V1 contracts pause everywhere that day); on 12.01.2027 the Noble USDC contract pauses and Circle snapshots every balance; from 13.01 manual redemption opens for "a holder-controlled wallet" whose address is in that snapshot. Primary source

Almost none of the USDC is held by people on Noble. We read Noble's own API on 18.09 at 03:21: 102,047,335 USDC issued, of which 91,390,167 — 89.6% — sits in IBC escrow, backing USDC.n that lives on Osmosis, dYdX, the Cosmos Hub and other chains. In a Noble snapshot, that money belongs to escrow addresses, not to the people holding the vouchers.

The announcement does not say what happens to it. Nothing about pools, contracts or escrow — only the holder-controlled wallet. Press reports that pool balances "will not qualify" cite nothing from Circle. Our inference, not Circle's: if your USDC.n is on another chain, holding it in your own wallet there is not the same as holding it on Noble.

The way out comes from Cosmos, not Circle. Per the Cosmos Hub forum, a Skip:Go flow into Injective's USDC has been live since 11.09, Keplr shows a banner, Osmosis runs 1:1 transmuter pools with no fee, and a one-click flow is due in October. Forum

3. What changed this week?

Harmony: the date to leave was the last day. Users were asked to exit contracts by 10 September; validators could switch off from 07:00 PT. The last shard-0 block, 93,624,315, came at 14:41:43 UTC — 41 minutes later. The final 14 hours carried 9,171 transactions; a normal day had 300–800. Our own measurement on 11.09, rechecked on 18.09: still stopped. 420.5m ONE (~$270k) sits frozen in contracts, and a multisig on a halted chain cannot sign anything.

Chainlink missed its own date twice more. CSPX/USD, IB01/USD and IBTA/USD — due off on 2 September — died on 16.09 at 21:20:23, all three proxies zeroed in one block. Two feeds dated 16 September, USD0++/USD and DOLO/USD, were still updating on the 18th. About 57 Data Streams were announced on 16.09 for shutdown on 18.09: two days' notice. In one month the directory's date has come after the event, two weeks before it, and two days before it. Changelog

LayerZero keeps narrowing. Stargate's Bus mode ends 01.10, STG→ZRO conversion ends 15.12, and on 15.12 the Labs relayer for Endpoint v1 (ULNv2) is deprecated — apps pinned to it get "messages unable to be executed". That last one was posted on 7 August; we missed it. Primary source

4. What changed quietly?

Solana transactions v1 went live on 15.09 at about 01:00 — and they break readers, not senders. Block and transaction requests without maxSupportedTransactionVersion: 1 fail on blocks containing v1; fee sponsors that cap costs by scanning ComputeBudget stop capping anything; Yellowstone geyser builds before 15.1.1 quietly downgrade v1 to v0. Primary source

base/node — 68k stars — was archived on 08.09, two weeks before a hardfork. Releases moved to base/base as ghcr.io/base/node; a node built from the old repo will not know about Cobalt. Primary source

OP Stack Upgrade 20 removes functions from SystemConfig. batchInbox() and setGasConfig() go, overhead() returns 0, and proving a withdrawal needs viem 2.51.0+. Mainnet on 24.09 for OP, Ink, Unichain and Soneium. Primary source

Etherscan now adds networks with an expiry date on free access. Arc and Robinhood Chain arrived on 16.09, free until 15.10, Lite from 16.10. Primary source

Archived without a word: thirdweb-dev/engine and thirdweb-dev/contracts on 15.09, suiet/wallet-kit on 18.09 — no notice in the README, npm packages not marked deprecated. ton-blockchain/verifier at least names its successor.

5. What we are watching

• SNS: .sol resolution in the official SDKs pauses at slot 452,825,395 — early October by slot rate, "mid to late October" by SNS. Domains become .sns; SDKs need major upgrades.
• Cosmos Hub v28.2.0 at height 33,073,000 (about 21.09) if proposal 1055 passes; the vote closes on 20.09 at 14:59.
• Flashblocks are being abandoned from both sides: Base Denim (October) removes them and the pending tag; OP Labs ends support, dates TBC.

6. What does this actually mean?

A deadline you copied once is a deadline you have to re-read. LayerZero did not publish a new post; it edited a July page and moved a date forward. Chainlink's directory still shows 2 September for feeds that died on the 16th. The date that matters is the one on the source today.

An exit date is the last day, not the start of a window. Harmony gave no slack between "please leave" and "stopped". Plan for the announced date to be the final block.

A snapshot sees whoever holds the address. On Noble, for nine dollars in ten, that is an escrow contract. If your money sits behind a pool, a bridge or an escrow, the rules written for "your wallet" do not describe you.

7. What to do, step by step

1. Before 21–23 September: close BitMEX spot, convert, withdraw; withdraw Stargate liquidity on Aurora, Taiko, LightLink and Gnosis.
2. Before 23–24 September: Base operators move to base/base v1.4.0+; OP Stack withdrawal tooling moves to viem 2.51.0+.
3. Today: if you read Solana blocks, set maxSupportedTransactionVersion: 1 everywhere.
4. Before 13 October: bring USDC.n back to Noble or migrate it; don't wait for 12 January.
5. Before 15 December: move LayerZero v1 apps off ULNv2.

8. What we ship

• The board on the series page: 32 open deadlines, every closed one marked with how it was checked.
• The Noble escrow read — two public endpoints, supply/by_denom and denoms/uusdc/total_escrow on api.noble.xyz, reproducible by anyone.
• The Harmony measurement: three independent endpoints, one final block.

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Infra Graveyard Weekly covers developer-facing deprecations and shutdowns in crypto infrastructure — the changelog layer, not the headlines. Subscribe via RSS or by email.