Circle Launches Arc Blockchain for Payments and Tokenized Financial Markets

Circle has launched the public mainnet of Arc, expanding beyond its USDC stablecoin business with a blockchain built for payments, tokenized assets, financial markets, and automated economic activity worldwide.

Circle Takes Arc Mainnet Live With USDC as Native Gas

Circle launched Arc as a Layer 1 blockchain designed for real-time money movement and financial applications. The network uses USDC for transaction fees and supports EVM-compatible applications.

Arc also offers deterministic sub-second finality, which allows transactions to reach final settlement quickly. Circle currently operates the network with a permissioned group of institutional validators.

More than 100 applications and over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders are participating at launch. Circle said Arc’s testnet processed more than 700 million transactions before the public mainnet release.

“Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said. He described USDC as the company’s first step toward broader internet-based financial infrastructure.

Arc Targets Payments and Tokenized Markets

Circle built Arc to support payments, foreign exchange, lending, trading and tokenized financial assets. Aave, Morpho and Uniswap are among the protocols available through the network at launch.

Circle Payments Network and StableFX also connect directly with Arc. StableFX supports round-the-clock currency trading and settlement using several stablecoins, including USDC, EURC, JPYC and KRW1.

Tokenized funds are another part of the network’s initial offering. BlackRock’s BUIDL and Circle’s USYC can support trading, lending and collateral-related activities on Arc.

BlackRock digital assets head Robbie Mitchnick said purpose-built blockchains could support wider digital asset adoption. He said Arc “appears clearly well positioned to serve stablecoin and payment use cases at scale.”

Circle Considers Proof-of-Stake Model for Arc

Arc currently relies on institutional validators, with participants joining through a phased rollout. Circle named BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa and Standard Chartered among its founding validator group.

Circle also minted an initial supply of 10 billion ARC tokens. However, the company said the minting does not confirm a public ARC token launch.

The company is planning to transition Arc from the proof-of-work model to the proof-of-stake model in 2027. Under that plan, ARC could do network security, governance and other coordination functions.

Even if Circle follows the new model, USDC will continue to be Arc’s gas currency. Circle is also working on payment and tokenized financial markets infrastructure for Arc, as well as privacy tools and AgentVM.

For more on enterprise-grade networks like Arc, explore how top-tier stablecoin infrastructure platforms power secure and programmable payment systems.