Circle Launches Arc Mainnet With BlackRock, DTCC and Visa as Validators
Circle has launched Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain for payments, trading, and agent-driven economic activity, with public mainnet now live. USDC is built in as the gas token, reinforcing its role across the network. Arc’s founding cohort includes major financial and payments firms such as BlackRock, Mastercard, Visa, DTCC, ICE, MoneyGram, and others. The chain uses a permissioned validator model and a defined governance perimeter, which Circle says should make it suitable for banks handling treasury, trading, and confidential payments on a public chain. Circle also completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens, though it says this does not mean a public token launch is guaranteed. The company has already raised $222 million in a presale. Arc integrates banks, lending protocols, exchanges, and tokenized collateral providers, and includes features like agent wallets, spending limits, nanopayments, and optional post-quantum signatures. Circle says its testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year.
