The New York-based digital finance company said Arc’s public mainnet went live on Wednesday with more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders spanning banks, asset managers, payment networks, exchanges, custodians, decentralised finance protocols, wallets and artificial intelligence platforms.
Arc is a Layer 1 blockchain integrated with Circle’s financial platform and USDC, its dollar-backed stablecoin. Transaction fees are paid in USDC rather than a volatile native asset, while the network is designed to deliver deterministic settlement in under a second. Circle said the structure is intended to support payments, foreign exchange, trading, lending, asset issuance and other financial-market activity around the clock.
The launch also places major financial groups directly inside the network’s operating structure. Founding validators include BlackRock, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Galaxy, Global Payments, Intercontinental Exchange, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa. Validators are responsible for confirming transactions and helping secure the blockchain.
Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire described Arc as the company’s most significant product launch since USDC, saying the network was built for a financial system in which people, companies and software agents can transact continuously. The company is positioning Arc as infrastructure that combines open blockchain development with operational and compliance features designed for established financial institutions.
Several decentralised finance platforms are active from the first day. Aave has introduced a lending market on Arc, while Morpho and Uniswap are among protocols available on the network. Circle has also integrated tools for cross-chain transfers and foreign-exchange settlement, seeking to make Arc useful for both institutional markets and existing blockchain applications.
Circle also introduced Arc Studio, an AI-assisted development environment, alongside application kits for financial workflows and Arc Portal, which provides interfaces for wallets and software agents. Its interoperability tools are designed to move USDC and other assets between Arc and external blockchain networks.
The network supports Circle StableFX, which is designed for programmable, round-the-clock foreign-exchange settlement using stablecoins. Arc is also intended to host USDC, Circle’s euro-backed EURC and tokenised real-world assets. Privacy functions, including confidential transactions and balances with controlled viewing access, remain under development for broader network release.
Circle said Arc supports post-quantum signatures and uses a permissioned validator set at launch. The company describes the underlying architecture as open for developers, although the validator model gives selected institutions responsibility for securing the network. That combination is aimed at meeting security, operational and compliance expectations associated with financial-market infrastructure while preserving interoperability with blockchain applications.
USDC had more than $74 billion in circulation around the launch, according to Circle. At the end of the second quarter, circulation stood at $73.3 billion, up 19 per cent from a year earlier, while USDC on-chain transaction volume during the quarter reached $14.8 trillion, a 151 per cent increase year on year. Those figures underline the scale of the stablecoin ecosystem that Circle is seeking to connect more closely with Arc.
Arc had operated in private mainnet before Wednesday’s public opening, with institutional participants testing uses including automated payments, stablecoin issuance, tokenised assets, foreign exchange and on-chain markets. Its public testnet, introduced in October 2025, processed more than 700 million transactions before the mainnet debut, according to figures released by Circle.
The company has also completed the genesis creation of 10 billion ARC tokens, although it has not committed to a public release of the token. Arc does not require ARC for ordinary transaction fees because gas charges are denominated in USDC, a design intended to make costs more predictable for businesses and financial institutions.
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