Circle launches Arc mainnet with institutional validators

Circle opened the public mainnet of Arc, a new Layer 1 blockchain that charges transaction fees in USDC and relies on a fixed set of regulated financial institutions to produce blocks.

Validator consortium

Block production is handled by a permissioned cohort that includes BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Visa, Mastercard, ICE, Galaxy, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Worldpay and Circle itself. The consortium is described as a group of vetted, SOC 2‑certified operators.

Gas model and performance

Arc’s gas fees are denominated in USDC with a target base fee of roughly $0.01 per transaction and a cap of 20,000 Gwei. The network uses an EIP‑1559‑style fee mechanism and reports an average weekly transaction cost of $0.045. Benchmarks show deterministic finality under one second, finality latency below 350 ms, and throughput above 3,000 transactions per second with 20 validators.

DeFi and application ecosystem

More than 100 applications are live at launch, including DeFi protocols Aave, Morpho and Uniswap. Aave is deploying a V4 market on Arc, while Morpho supplies lending liquidity. Trading platforms such as Aero, 1inch, and Pools.trade (Uniswap Labs launchpad) are also available.

Token minting and distribution

Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens as a genesis supply. The whitepaper allocates 60 % of tokens to ecosystem incentives, 25 % to Circle, and 15 % to a long‑term reserve. Early‑phase inflation is set at roughly 2‑3 % per year on a decaying schedule. A $222 million presale raised funds at a $3 billion fully‑diluted valuation, with investors including a16z crypto, BlackRock, Apollo Funds and others.

Use cases beyond DeFi

Arc is positioned as a settlement layer for AI agents, with Circle reporting that USDC accounts for 98.8 % of agent‑driven transaction volume. The network supports cross‑currency settlement through Circle StableFX, listing 22 stablecoins, and includes tokenized assets such as Circle’s USYC money‑market fund, BlackRock’s BUIDL treasury token, private credit funds and cirBTC (wrapped Bitcoin).

Future roadmap

Circle’s roadmap mentions a potential shift from proof‑of‑authority to proof‑of‑stake in 2027 and the development of opt‑in privacy features using confidential transactions. Post‑quantum signatures are already supported.