Circle has launched the public mainnet of Arc, its Layer 1 blockchain built around stablecoin payments, financial markets and agentic economic activity. Arc went live on September 16 with USDC as its gas asset, more than 100 applications and over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders, moving the network beyond the private-mainnet phase that preceded its public rollout.
The launch follows Circle’s August announcement detailing Arc’s founding validators and integrations. BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa and Worldpay, now part of Global Payments, form part of the initial validator cohort alongside Circle.
Arc Combines Open Deployment With Permissioned Validators
Arc is EVM-compatible and allows developers to deploy applications using familiar Ethereum tooling, but its security model differs from permissionless validator networks. Circle explicitly states that Arc is operated by a permissioned validator set, even though application deployment and participation at the builder level are designed to remain open.
That structure reflects the market Circle is targeting. Arc is positioned primarily as financial infrastructure for payments, foreign exchange, lending, tokenized assets and settlement, with deterministic sub-second finality and transaction fees denominated in USDC rather than a volatile native token. Circle Payments Network is also integrated directly with Arc for cross-border settlement.
Stablecoins and tokenized assets are central to the initial ecosystem. Circle lists USDC, EURC and more than 20 additional local stablecoins as active or onboarding to its StableFX infrastructure, including JPYC, KRW1 and TRYB. That wording is narrower than saying every listed stablecoin is already natively deployed on Arc, but it establishes the network as part of Circle’s wider multi-currency settlement strategy.
Tokenized Assets and DeFi Go Live on Arc
Arc also launches with institutional and DeFi assets available for trading, lending and collateral use. Circle says USYC, BlackRock’s BUIDL, private-credit funds and cirBTC are among the assets supporting Arc markets, while Aave and Morpho are anchoring on-chain credit and Uniswap is among the network’s day-one trading protocols.
The launch expands on integrations disclosed before mainnet. BlackRock had already outlined plans to deploy BUIDL on Arc, while DTCC is working toward tokenizing DTC-custodied assets on the network beginning in the second half of 2027. The latter remains a future integration rather than a service already available at launch.
Circle is also presenting Arc as infrastructure for autonomous software. The network was designed with AI agents as economic participants, supported by Circle Agent Stack, policy-controlled wallets and nanopayment infrastructure, while future AgentVM functionality is intended to provide protected execution for sensitive agent workflows.
CEO Jeremy Allaire described Arc as Circle’s most significant launch since USDC. The immediate significance is that one of the largest stablecoin infrastructure providers now operates its own public Layer 1 while retaining institutional control over the validator layer. The next milestones will be production usage, further validator decentralization and Circle’s planned 2027 transition path from Proof of Authority toward Proof of Stake, rather than the launch announcement alone.