Circle launches Arc mainnet with BlackRock and Visa among validators, mints 10 billion ARC tokens

Circle Internet Group (CRCL) opened the public mainnet of its Arc Layer 1 blockchain on Wednesday, with a new Aave V4 lending market, Morpho, and Uniswap among the protocols available from day one.

In a statement shared with The Block, Circle said more than 100 applications are available at launch overall, with over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders participating.

Arc's public testnet launched in October 2025 and has processed more than 700 million transactions in less than a year, Circle said. On mainnet, users pay gas fees in USDC, with sub-second transaction finality. The network is also EVM-compatible, so existing Solidity contracts work on Arc.

"Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle's history since USDC itself, and it is the embodiment of the premise we have operated on for thirteen years: money should work the way the internet works," CEO Jeremy Allaire said. "USDC was step one. Arc is the network built for what comes next. The agentic economy and the onchain economy are not two different revolutions; they are the same economy seen from two sides, and both need infrastructure that never closes, settles in under a second, and is trusted by the institutions that anchor the global financial system."

Circle named its founding validators in August, with BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, and Visa among the 11 institutions in the group, which will join the network in phases. ICE VP of Strategic Initiatives, Michael Blaugrund, said its institutional customers had raised issues around fees and settlement onchain. "Arc's native capabilities, including predictable fees and instant finality, address real friction points these customers raised," he said.

Separately, Circle and DTCC plan to enable tokenization of DTC-custodied assets on Arc beginning in the second half of 2027.

Circle creates 10 billion ARC tokens

The full initial supply of ARC was minted in the U.S. this week, according to the statement. However, Circle said creating the 10 billion tokens was a technical milestone, not a commitment to launch them publicly, as the company explores a move from proof of authority to proof of stake in 2027. ARC is intended to serve as the network's coordination mechanism for security, utility, and governance, while USDC will remain the currency used to pay fees, Circle said.

Circle's payments network and StableFX service are also integrated into Arc. The latter supports round-the-clock currency trading and settlement, with USDC, EURC, GBPA, JPYC, and KRW1 among the stablecoins supported. BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle's USYC are among the tokenized funds available for trading, lending, and use as collateral.

Circle has yet to release its opt-in privacy feature across the network, but said it is working on confidential transactions and balances with view keys for authorized parties, enabling banks, asset managers, and enterprises to use a public blockchain for treasury, trading, and confidential payments.

Arc Studio, one of the two developer tools released with mainnet, is an AI coding agent that generates smart contracts and application code. The other is Arc App Kits, an SDK covering payments, swaps, onramps, and yield. 

Circle is also developing AgentVM, which would let AI agents work with sensitive data in a protected environment, the firm said. The company's roadmap includes a separate payments environment targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second and broader post-quantum protections. Arc already supports post-quantum signatures.

The Daily newsletter: Never miss a beat with The Block's daily digest of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem. Sign up for free!