Circle has switched on the public mainnet of Arc, a new Layer 1 blockchain built specifically for payments, trading and automated agent-driven transactions, with USDC serving as the network’s gas token. The launch, which went live Wednesday, September 16, 2026, marks the first time a publicly traded company has minted a native token for a new blockchain — and it does so with a validator roster that reads like a who’s who of global finance and payments.
Alongside Circle, the founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo, Visa, Worldpay and Galaxy. That lineup signals something different from the permissionless, anonymous-validator model that has defined most public blockchains since Bitcoin. Arc runs on a permissioned proof-of-authority system, meaning a defined group of institutions — not an open pool of anonymous node operators — currently validates transactions and secures the network.
Why Circle Built Its Own Chain
USDC, Circle’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, has grown into one of the largest pieces of infrastructure in digital finance, with circulating supply now near $74 billion. Rather than continuing to rely solely on existing blockchains like Ethereum or Solana to move that stablecoin, Circle has built a chain tailored to its own use case: fast, low-friction settlement for payments, trading, and increasingly, transactions initiated by autonomous software agents rather than humans.
That last category is not theoretical. Circle cites Dune data showing USDC already accounts for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume — a striking figure that suggests automated trading bots, settlement agents and other software-driven economic actors are already overwhelmingly choosing USDC as their unit of account. Arc is designed to give that activity a dedicated home, with a network built for speed and predictable fees rather than general-purpose flexibility.
The chain didn’t appear overnight. Its testnet launched last year with early participation from BlackRock and Visa, and Circle says the testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year — a volume meant to demonstrate the network could handle production-grade throughput before real value moved across it.
What the ARC Token Mint Signals
Alongside the mainnet activation, Circle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens this week. Importantly, Circle has framed this as a technical step rather than a commitment to a public token launch. The company has tied a possible shift from proof of authority to proof of stake — which would presumably involve broader use of the ARC token for network security — to a target of 2027, leaving a multi-year runway before the token’s role, if any, in public markets becomes clear.
That caution hasn’t stopped speculative interest. A presale of Arc tokens earlier this year raised $222 million at a $3 billion valuation, underscoring that investors are already pricing in the possibility that Arc becomes significant infrastructure — even before its governance and tokenomics are finalized.
Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s CEO, has described the launch as the company’s most significant event since USDC itself, a comparison that places Arc at the center of Circle’s long-term strategy rather than treating it as a side project.
A Broader Institutional Footprint
Network access has already been extended well beyond the founding validators. Banks including BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale and State Street can access Arc, as can decentralized finance protocols Aave, Morpho, Uniswap, Aero and fomo, plus exchanges Binance, Kraken, Bybit and OKX. Coinbase access is planned but not yet live. On the collateral side, BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL and Circle’s own USYC are being used as tokenized collateral on the network, linking traditional asset managers’ products directly into Arc’s settlement layer.
Security has also been built with a longer time horizon in mind: Arc includes optional post-quantum cryptographic signatures, with additional protections reportedly still in development — a nod to concerns that future quantum computing could eventually threaten current cryptographic standards.
The launch lands at a moment when U.S. crypto regulation remains unsettled. The Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act earlier this week left the industry without the federal rulebook many firms had hoped for, and the crypto lobby has already signaled it will make the stalled bill a midterm election issue, according to reporting on the industry’s response to the Senate vote. Arc’s launch, built around a permissioned validator model dominated by regulated institutions, arrives independent of that legislative fight but illustrates how major financial players are building stablecoin infrastructure regardless of where Washington’s rulemaking stands.
What happens next will depend on adoption metrics that are still unfolding: how much real payment and trading volume migrates to Arc from other chains, whether additional banks or exchanges request access, and how the proof-of-stake transition — and any eventual public ARC token distribution — takes shape ahead of the 2027 target Circle has floated. For now, Arc exists as a working network with institutional validators already active, but its longer-term governance and tokenomics remain a work in progress.
Source: Decrypt
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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