Circle launched Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for payments and trading, on Wednesday with over 100 institutional and ecosystem partners on day one.
The founding validator cohort includes BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo, Visa, Worldpay, and Galaxy. Circle's permissioned validator model pairs with a defined governance structure intended to allow banks to use the public chain for treasury, trading, and confidential payments.
Circle completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens this week, making it the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new Layer 1 blockchain. The company stated the mint is not a commitment to publicly launch ARC, describing it instead as a technical step toward a possible transition from proof of authority to proof of stake in 2027.
Circle had previously raised $222 million in an Arc token presale at a $3 billion valuation.
USDC, Circle's stablecoin with approximately $74 billion in circulation, serves as Arc's gas token. Access to the network includes major banks such as BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale, and State Street, alongside lending protocols Aave and Morpho, trading platforms including Uniswap and Aero, and exchanges Binance, Kraken, Bybit, OKX, and Coinbase.
Arc supports optional post-quantum signatures with additional protections in development. Circle's testnet, launched last year with BlackRock and Visa as participants, processed over 700 million transactions in under a year.
