Circle launched the Arc mainnet, its Layer 1 blockchain. More than 100 financial companies and institutions joined the ecosystem at launch, while the number of available applications exceeded 100.
Circle Internet Group launched the mainnet of Arc, a public L1 blockchain designed for payments, financial markets, and transactions involving AI agents. Arc is integrated with Circle’s infrastructure, including the USDC and EURC stablecoins and Circle Payments Network. Network fees are paid in USDC, eliminating the need to use separate cryptocurrencies.
Circle highlighted several other key features of the network:
- transaction finality in under 1 second;
- support for confidential transactions, which is still under development;
- support for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs);
- infrastructure for payments and other transactions involving AI agents;
- support for post-quantum signatures.
Arc’s initial validator cohort included BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Galaxy, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa, and Worldpay. The validators will be rolled out in phases.
The ecosystem also includes banks such as BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale, and State Street; crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, and Upbit; payment companies Mastercard, Visa, and MoneyGram; and digital asset custodians Anchorage, BitGo, Fireblocks, and Zodia Custody. Aave and Morpho support Arc’s credit markets at launch, while Uniswap and other protocols provide trading infrastructure.
Another area of focus for Arc is automated economic activity. According to Circle, USDC accounts for 98.8% of transaction volume generated by AI agents. The company is developing its Agent Stack infrastructure, which includes programmable wallets and micropayments, as well as Arc Portal, where users can fund agent wallets, set spending limits, and delegate transactions to agents.
Before the public launch, Arc’s testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year. The project’s community includes more than 75,000 active Arc House members and 10,000 Architect ambassadors, who built more than 1,200 projects. Arc is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to use existing Solidity smart contracts and familiar development tools.
Circle also minted the initial supply of its native ARC token, totaling 10 billion tokens. The company stressed that the mint doesn’t constitute a commitment to launch ARC publicly. ARC is intended to serve as a future mechanism for network security, governance, and coordination, while network fees will continue to be paid in USDC.
Circle Co-Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire called Arc “the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself.” According to Allaire, USDC was the first step in the development of the company’s infrastructure, while Arc is the network designed for the next stage of the digital economy.
In 2027, Circle plans to explore transitioning Arc from the Proof of Authority consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake. The roadmap also includes dedicated environments for confidential transactions, AI agents, and payments. For the payments environment, Circle is targeting throughput of more than 100,000 transactions per second.
