Meme Coin Launchpads Captured 82% of Arc's First Day Trading Volume

Circle’s Arc network recorded $410.8 million in decentralized exchange (DEX) volume on its first day of public mainnet. While the platform was marketed as an open Layer 1 “economic operating system” for financial markets, the majority of activity came from speculative meme‑coin launchpads.

Institutional Vision vs. Market Reality

Arc is built by Circle, the issuer of USDC, and positioned as a neutral, always‑on infrastructure for real‑time money movement and agentic economic activity. Its founding validator set includes major financial players such as BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, DTCC and ICE. Over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had already deployed or tested Arc’s private mainnet before the public launch, with asset managers like Bitwise, BlackRock and Janus Henderson moving tokenized funds onto the chain, and payment firms such as Visa and MoneyGram planning stablecoin settlement.

Launchpad Dominance on Day One

On‑chain data shows that meme‑coin launchpads generated roughly 82% of the total DEX volume. Arguspad alone accounted for $202.35 million, representing $336.26 million of the day‑one volume. Other launchpads contributed significant amounts: Minara.fun $36.41 million and Tollylabs $19.65 million.

Arguspad minted 83,751 tokens in 24 hours, more than 86% of all tokens created on Arc that day. Overall, traders minted 97,025 tokens and executed 7.76 million transactions on September 16.

Comparison with Other New Chains

For context, Robinhood Chain cleared $14.74 million on its opening day (July 1) and later reached a $3.7 billion daily record in August. Arc’s first‑day volume was nearly 28 times larger, highlighting the impact of launchpad activity.

Outlook

The sustainability of this trading pattern remains uncertain. Future weeks will reveal whether institutional flow can match the early launchpad‑driven churn.