Circle launched Arc's public mainnet on September 16 with 11 founding validators composed almost entirely of traditional financial institutions. The validator cohort includes BlackRock, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Galaxy, Global Payments, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Mastercard, Moneygram, SBI, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa, operating alongside Circle itself.
The founding validator set notably excludes independent node operators, staking collectives, and crypto-native infrastructure firms. Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that "Arc is built on a simple premise: that the global financial system deserves a blockchain network it can trust."
Technical Architecture and Initial Applications
Arc is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that uses USDC as its native gas token, meaning transaction costs are denominated in dollars rather than a volatile network asset. The network features sub-second settlement finality and integrated stablecoin foreign exchange functionality.
Circle raised $222 million for Arc's development by selling 740 million ARC tokens at $0.30 each at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation. More than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders participated in Arc's private mainnet testing. Day-one applications include decentralized finance platforms Aave, Uniswap, Morpho, and Aerodrome; payments providers Rain, Thunes, and Wirex; and wallet and exchange platforms including Kraken, MetaMask, Binance Wallet, Fireblocks, Ledger, and Upbit.
Ripple Partners Among Arc Validators
SBI and Mastercard, both significant partners of Ripple and the XRP Ledger ecosystem, are among Arc's founding validators. SBI has held approximately 9% of Ripple since 2016 and operates Japan's only live XRP remittance corridor. In March 2026, SBI became the first regulated RLUSD distributor in Asia. Mastercard has expanded its settlement framework to include RLUSD across eight blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger.
Both firms have now committed to infrastructure supporting competing stablecoin settlement systems.
Tokenization and Future Development
Arc enters a multi-billion dollar tokenization market where Circle's USYC has exceeded $3 billion and BlackRock's BUIDL sits near $2.4 billion. BlackRock plans to deploy BUIDL on Arc, allowing investors to subscribe, redeem, and deploy fund assets in a single onchain environment.
DTCC is working with Circle to tokenize DTC-custodied assets on Arc beginning in the second half of 2027. Ripple has also been expanding into institutional credit markets on the XRP Ledger, backing an institutional lending market with partners using RLUSD as the credit asset.
