Overview
- Over 100 institutions — including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Visa, AWS, Coinbase and Kraken — joined the public testnet to evaluate shared settlement rails.
- The EVM-compatible chain uses USDC as gas to deliver dollar-based fees, sub-second finality and opt-in privacy for regulated workflows.
- Participants are testing tokenized funds, programmable settlement, cross-border payments and on-chain foreign exchange.
- Regional stablecoin issuers such as JPYC (JPY), BRLA (BRL) and QCAD (CAD) are onboard, with South Korea’s BDACS announcing a KRW-backed token on Arc.
- Circle is stewarding the network during testing and says it will expand validator participation and move toward community governance if validation progresses.