On September 16, Circle opened the public mainnet of Arc, its Layer-1 blockchain designed for decentralised applications, financial markets and transactions using the USDC stablecoin.
Circle said Arc launched with more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders across banking, asset management, payments, exchanges, custody, DeFi, wallets and artificial intelligence. Because Arc is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, existing Solidity contracts and developer tools can be used on the network.
Crypto users can transfer USDC to Arc through many widely used exchanges and wallets. They can also access supported tokenised assets and stablecoins through DeFi applications and decentralised exchanges, while Circle’s traditional financial partners provide infrastructure for cross-border transfers and payments.
A defining feature of Arc is that transaction fees are paid in USDC. This gives users dollar-denominated fees and removes the need to hold a volatile native token such as ETH solely to pay for network activity.
Circle has nevertheless completed the genesis mint of ARC, creating an initial supply of 10 billion tokens. The company describes ARC as a potential coordination mechanism for network security, utility and governance if Arc moves towards staking.
However, Circle explicitly said that the genesis mint is not a commitment to launch ARC publicly. The network is exploring a transition from its current permissioned Proof-of-Authority model to Proof-of-Stake in 2027, while fees are expected to remain payable in USDC.
Circle also plans to expand Arc with opt-in confidential transactions, specialised network sectors, AI-oriented development tools and AgentVM. AgentVM is being designed to let artificial-intelligence agents work with sensitive information in a protected environment while Arc stores an immutable record that applications can use to verify the origin of results.
Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire described Arc as the company’s most significant launch since USDC. He said USDC was the first step towards making money move like information on the internet, while Arc is intended to provide the infrastructure for what comes next.
“The agentic economy and the onchain economy are not two different revolutions; they are the same economy seen from two sides, and both need infrastructure that never closes, settles in under a second, and is trusted by the institutions that anchor the global financial system.”
Arc is the second blockchain launched by a major digital-finance company in recent months, following Robinhood Chain, the Layer-2 network developed by broker Robinhood. The latter has benefited from growing activity around tokenised equities and memecoins.
The launch also extends Circle’s broader effort to connect stablecoins with conventional financial infrastructure. FORECK.INFO previously examined how tokenised deposits are being used for cross-border settlement, another sign that blockchain-based money is moving towards continuous global payments.
Parts of Arc’s ecosystem were active before the formal public launch on September 16 through private-mainnet access and launch preparations. A number of independent projects and unofficial tokens appeared around the network during this period. Claims of rapid profits from such tokens remain speculative and should not be interpreted as Circle endorsements or guaranteed returns.
