What Is Arc? Circle's Stablecoin Layer 1 Blockchain

What Is Arc?

Arc is a Layer 1 blockchain built by Circle, the company behind USDC. It is EVM compatible, and transaction fees are paid in USDC rather than in a separate, price volatile gas token. Circle built it for financial activity specifically: payments, foreign exchange, tokenized assets, capital markets, and transactions initiated by software agents.

Public mainnet went live on September 16, 2026, after a testnet year and a private mainnet with more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders. Anyone can deploy on Arc, but block production is restricted to a permissioned set of institutions, a trade Circle makes to meet the operational and compliance standards banks and asset managers require.

Arc at a Glance

How Does Arc Work?

Arc's design choices point at one goal, which is making onchain settlement behave predictably enough for finance teams to rely on.

• EVM compatibility lowers migration cost. Existing Solidity contracts, wallets, indexers, and audit practices carry over, which shortens the path for institutions already building on Ethereum.
• Deterministic finality removes the confirmation window. On chains with probabilistic finality, a transaction becomes progressively harder to reverse as blocks accumulate, and operators wait a set number of confirmations before treating it as done. Deterministic means a transaction is either final or it is not. For a payment processor or a clearing workflow, that removes a whole class of operational judgment calls.
• Privacy is opt in and still being rolled out. The design covers confidential transactions and balances with view keys, which Circle describes as in development for network wide release rather than fully live.
• Post-quantum signatures are supported today. Broader post-quantum protection is still in development.
• Circle's own infrastructure connects outward. Cross chain transfers run through CCTP, alongside Circle Gateway, programmable wallets, and native integration with Circle Payments Network.

Why Does Paying Gas in USDC Matter?

Because it removes the need to hold a second, unrelated asset just to move the first one.

One thing sits behind that simplicity. You pay in USDC, but the network is designed to run on ARC. Circle's design describes protocol fees being converted to ARC at the protocol level, then split between validator and staker rewards and a permanent burn. Dollar pricing is what the user sees, not how the network funds itself long term.

Who Secures the Arc Network?

A permissioned cohort of eleven institutions, alongside Circle, rolling out in phases after launch:

• Asset management and market infrastructure: BlackRock, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, ICE
• Payments networks: Visa, Mastercard, Worldpay (now Global Payments), MoneyGram
• Banking and financial groups: Standard Chartered, SBI Group, Sumitomo Corporation
• Digital asset firms: Galaxy

Arc runs on proof of authority, so the trade is accountability for openness. Each operator is a regulated or publicly traded institution with its name attached to its node, but no one can join by staking capital.

Circle says it is exploring a proof of stake transition in 2027. That would add an economic layer rather than open the door. The permissioned set stays as the identity layer, and the initial governance model keeps validator membership with Circle because it involves sanctions screening and jurisdictional limits.

What Is Arc Used For?

Four categories of activity shape the network's design.

• Payments and cross border transfers. Circle Payments Network is integrated natively into Arc for moving money across borders at low cost with near real time settlement.
• Foreign exchange. Circle StableFX provides round the clock cross currency settlement between stablecoins, spanning USDC and EURC plus a growing set of local currency stablecoins.
• Tokenized assets and capital markets. Circle's USYC tokenized money market fund, BlackRock's BUIDL, private credit funds, and cirBTC give onchain markets assets to trade, lend, and post as collateral. Circle is separately working with DTCC to enable tokenization of DTC custodied assets on Arc beginning in the second half of 2027.
• Agentic economic activity. Circle describes Arc as the first blockchain designed from genesis for AI agents as economic actors, supported by Agent Wallets with spend controls, nanopayments, and Arc Portal for delegating onchain tasks.

What Launched on Arc Mainnet?

Arc went live with more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders.

• Trading and liquidity: Aero, fomo, and Uniswap anchor day one trading, alongside 1inch, Hibachi, LI.FI, Pump.fun, Robinhood, and others across spot, perpetuals, and crosschain execution
• Lending: Aave and Morpho anchor onchain credit markets, with Bitwise, Galaxy, Gauntlet, Keyrock, and Steakhouse Financial supporting vault strategies and risk oversight
• Banks and asset managers: BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale, State Street, Janus Henderson, ProShares, and xStocks by Payward among those building or exploring
• Exchanges and custody: Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Upbit for access, with Anchorage, BitGo, Copper, Fireblocks, and Zodia Custody for institutional custody
• Wallets: Ledger, MetaMask, Phantom, Rainbow, Trust Wallet, and major exchange wallets
• Developer tooling: Arc Studio, an onchain coding agent, and Arc App Kits, an SDK for payments, swaps, onramps, and yield

Is There an ARC Token?

It exists, but it is not launched publicly and not trading. Circle minted the full initial supply at genesis and has sold a portion to institutions, while saying the mint is not a commitment to a public launch.

No Circle issued ARC trades anywhere, so an asset listed under an ARC ticker today belongs to a different project.

How Is Arc Different From Ethereum and Solana?

Arc narrows the target rather than competing on general purpose performance.

That makes the comparison a question of fit rather than ranking. A consumer application with unpredictable traffic and a token of its own has little reason to prefer Arc, while a treasury operation moving dollars on a schedule sits close to what the network was designed around.

What Are the Risks and Open Questions?

• Control sits with Circle in the early phase. The initial governance model assigns validator membership, protocol upgrades, incident response, and treasury decisions to Circle, with authority described as shifting to token holders over time.
• Headline features are still arriving. Opt-in privacy is in development for network wide release, the validator cohort is rolling out in phases, and the network sectors on the roadmap are not live.
• The token has no launch mechanics. Minted is not launched. There is no distribution plan, no market, and delivery to existing buyers depends on a transition Circle describes as exploratory.
• Money and gas are the same asset. On most chains a frozen stablecoin balance still leaves you a separate gas token to transact with. On Arc, Circle's own disclosure ties the ability to transact to obtaining and using USDC, so access to the network and access to the asset are one dependency rather than two.
• Long dated commitments. The DTCC connection targets the second half of 2027, so announced ambition and live capability are not the same thing.
• Circle disclaims its own roadmap. Features may be modified, delayed, or cancelled, and neither Arc nor ARC has been reviewed or approved by any regulatory authority.

How Do You Access Arc From Backpack?

Backpack Wallet supports Arc natively. Because Arc is EVM compatible, an existing Ethereum address works as an Arc address, so adding the network behaves like any other EVM chain in the wallet.

• Send, receive, and hold Arc assets in full self custody
• Swap tokens on Arc without leaving the app
• Bridge between Arc and other supported networks
• Browse applications built on Arc from the in wallet explorer
• Manage Arc balances alongside a full multichain portfolio

Arc uses USDC to pay transaction fees, so keep some USDC in the wallet to cover them.