Circle Sets September 16 Launch Date for Arc
Circle confirmed the launch date alongside its second-quarter results on August 5. Arc is currently operating as a private mainnet, where more than 100 institutional and ecosystem participants are already building applications and testing integrations.
The network has been designed around stablecoin payments, tokenised assets and financial-market infrastructure. USDC will serve as its native gas asset, allowing transaction fees to be paid in a dollar-denominated stablecoin rather than a volatile blockchain token.
Arc is expected to open to the public on September 16 with privacy capabilities, tools for programmable finance and infrastructure for issuing and managing tokenised real-world assets.
BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard Join the Validator Set
Circle has assembled a founding validator group that looks more like a list of global financial institutions than a conventional crypto network. Alongside Circle, the initial cohort includes BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, Intercontinental Exchange, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa.
The list is one of Arc’s strongest selling points, but it also makes the network’s early trade-off clear. Arc is presented as an open Layer-1 blockchain, yet its public mainnet will initially be secured by a permissioned validator set rather than by anyone able to join without approval.
Circle says this structure is intended to meet the operational, security and compliance standards expected by banks, asset managers and payment companies. It may help Arc win institutional trust quickly, although the network’s longer-term level of decentralisation will depend on how validator access develops after launch.
BlackRock Plans to Bring BUIDL to Arc
The founding institutions will not be limited to validating transactions. Several are already preparing products and infrastructure for the network.
BlackRock is expected to deploy BUIDL, its tokenised US dollar institutional liquidity fund, on Arc. Native USDC integration could allow investors to subscribe to, redeem and use BUIDL within the same onchain environment.
Circle is also working with DTCC to support the tokenisation of assets held in custody at The Depository Trust Company. The integration is expected to begin in the second half of 2027 and could allow market participants to use tokenised securities in third-party Arc applications while retaining the protections attached to the underlying assets.
BNY and Standard Chartered are exploring additional use cases involving digital-asset custody, access to stablecoins, foreign exchange and repo-market infrastructure.
Aave, Morpho and Uniswap Prepare for Day One
Circle is trying to avoid launching Arc as an empty institutional network. Aave, Aerodrome, Morpho and Uniswap are among the DeFi protocols expected to support lending, trading and onchain liquidity from the beginning.
Access will also be available through services including Binance Wallet, Fireblocks, Kraken, Ledger, MetaMask and Upbit. Rain, Thunes and Wirex are preparing payment and settlement integrations.
The involvement of Visa and Mastercard is particularly notable because both companies are building their own stablecoin products and settlement systems. Visa recently introduced a separate stablecoin platform for banks and fintech companies. Their participation in Arc suggests that payment groups are willing to support several competing rails rather than bet on a single blockchain.
Circle Receives Final Approval for a National Trust Bank
Arc’s launch follows another important step in Circle’s institutional strategy. On July 10, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval for the company to establish Circle National Trust.
The federally chartered trust bank is authorised to provide regulated custody of digital assets. Over time, it may also manage parts of the reserve infrastructure supporting USDC, although Circle National Trust will not operate as a conventional deposit-taking or lending bank.
Circle also received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services to establish Circle New York Trust, a limited-purpose trust company focused on digital assets.
Together, the licences strengthen Circle’s regulatory position as it moves beyond stablecoin issuance and builds a wider stack covering custody, payments, tokenisation and blockchain infrastructure.
USDC Circulation Reaches $73.3 Billion
The Arc announcement arrived with a profitable second quarter for Circle. Total revenue and reserve income reached $701 million, up 7% from the same period last year.
Net income from continuing operations was $48 million, compared with a $482 million loss a year earlier. The comparison was heavily affected by stock-based compensation expenses connected to Circle’s 2025 IPO. Adjusted EBITDA increased 8% to $143 million.
USDC circulation stood at $73.3 billion at the end of June, 19% higher year-on-year. Onchain USDC transaction volume rose 151% to $14.8 trillion during the quarter.
Despite that growth, USDC’s share of the fiat-backed stablecoin market slipped to approximately 27%. Circle therefore remains dependent on expanding circulation in a market where Tether is still dominant and new institutional stablecoins are beginning to compete for distribution.
Arc gives the company a way to capture more activity inside its own infrastructure instead of relying entirely on networks such as Ethereum and Solana. This is becoming increasingly important because Circle’s earnings remain highly exposed to interest earned on USDC reserves, a vulnerability examined in FORECK.INFO’s analysis of its rate-sensitive business.
Coinbase Partnership Will Continue
Coinbase said the conditions for automatically renewing its USDC partnership with Circle had been met and that the agreement would continue under the same terms.
The relationship remains central to USDC distribution. Coinbase holds a large amount of USDC on its platform and receives a share of the income generated by the reserves backing the stablecoin.
Circle Payments Network also continued to expand. At the end of the second quarter, its annualised transaction volume based on the previous 30 days had reached $14.7 billion, up 76% from the previous quarter. The network had enrolled 175 financial institutions, an increase of 29%.
Arc Token Revenue Lifts Circle’s Forecast
Circle raised its full-year forecast for other revenue from $150–170 million to $310–330 million. The revised range includes revenue recognised from the private presale of ARC tokens, alongside income from subscriptions, transaction services and newer infrastructure products.
The change makes Arc financially important even before the public mainnet goes live. Still, token-sale revenue is not recurring in the same way as payment fees or subscriptions, so the network will eventually need to prove that it can generate sustainable activity after the initial launch.
Conclusion: Arc will arrive with a validator set few new blockchains could match and with integrations spanning traditional finance, payments and DeFi. That gives Circle a strong start, but not a guaranteed victory. The real test will come after September 16: whether institutions move meaningful assets and settlement activity onto the network, and whether Arc can gradually become more open without losing the compliance standards that attracted those institutions in the first place.
