Overview
- Circle launched the Arc mainnet on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026, with a permissioned founding validator cohort that includes BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard and other global finance firms and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem partners.
- Arc is a purpose‑built Layer‑1 that uses USDC as the native gas token, is EVM‑compatible, and offers deterministic sub‑second finality to support fast stablecoin payments, trading and tokenized assets.
- Circle completed a 10 billion ARC genesis mint after a prior $222 million presale but said the mint does not commit the company to a public ARC token distribution and described the mint as a technical step toward a possible 2027 move from Proof‑of‑Authority to Proof‑of‑Stake.
- The network launched with broad integrations from exchanges, wallets and DeFi protocols and ships features for agent wallets, nanopayments and onchain FX (StableFX), which aim to let businesses and automated agents move value and settle cross‑border in near real time.
- Markets moved on the news with Circle shares falling on launch day, and the next milestones to watch are full security hardening, expanded privacy protections, the timing and mechanism of any public ARC token decision, and the planned consensus transition.