Circle launches Arc mainnet with USDC as its gas token

Circle launched the mainnet of Arc, its own layer-1 blockchain, on September 16, 2026, with fees paid in USDC and a founding validator group that includes BlackRock, DTCC, Visa and Mastercard.

Circle issues USDC, a dollar stablecoin. In its launch announcement it put USDC in circulation at more than $74 billion. Until now USDC has run on other companies' blockchains. Arc is the first network Circle has built and operates itself, and it is designed around its own dollar token.

What launched, and when

Arc has been public in stages. Circle announced a public testnet on October 28, 2025, and said more than 100 companies were involved in its design. According to Circle, the testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year.

On August 5, 2026, Circle named the founding validators and set September 16 as the mainnet date. The mainnet went live on that date. Circle's release, datelined New York, describes Arc as an open layer-1 "purpose-built for financial markets, real-time money movement, and agentic economic activity." Circle says more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders were live on the first day.

Who runs the validators

A validator is a node that proposes and votes on new blocks. On Arc the validators are chosen, not open to anyone. Circle's August 5 release states that Arc is "operated by a permissioned validator set," and the Arc documentation describes the model as proof of authority, made up of regulated institutions.

Some names on the list also appear elsewhere in Arc's history. BlackRock, ICE, SBI Group and Standard Chartered's venture arm were among the investors in Circle's ARC token presale in May 2026. Visa had already added Arc to its stablecoin settlement pilot in an announcement on April 29, 2026.

Circle says the network "explores a future transition from Proof of Authority toward Proof of Stake in 2027." That is a stated direction, not a scheduled upgrade.

How Arc works

Arc's execution layer is Reth, a Rust client for Ethereum, so the network is evm-compatible and runs the same kind of smart contracts as Ethereum. Its consensus engine is Malachite, which the documentation calls an implementation of the Tendermint BFT protocol. A block is final once more than two-thirds of validators agree.

Circle claims "sub-second finality" with "no reorganization risk." The documentation reports a benchmark of under 350 milliseconds with 20 validators. Both figures are Circle's own and describe finality, meaning the point after which a transaction cannot be reversed by the network.

Fees are the part most users will notice. Arc uses USDC as its native gas token. Circle's docs describe an eip 1559 fee market with a smoothing mechanism meant to keep the base fee from jumping during short traffic spikes. Circle's stated target is a base fee of about $0.001 per token transfer under normal load. That is a target, not a guaranteed price.

The launch release also describes planned "sectors": a Privacy Sector for opt-in confidential transactions, a Payment Sector "targeting low cost payments at more than 100,000 transactions per second," and an Agent Sector. Circle says confidential transactions are "in development for network-wide release," and the Arc documentation lists the privacy environment as planned. The 100,000 figure is a target Circle has set, not a measured result.

What it is for

Circle lists three main uses.

The first is payments. Circle says its Circle Payments Network is integrated into Arc and moves money across borders "for a fraction of a cent," settling in near real time.

The second is foreign exchange. Circle's StableFX product is described as offering "24/7 programmable FX trading" between stablecoins, with near-instant settlement.

The third is tokenized assets. Circle names its USYC tokenized money market fund and BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized treasury fund, tokenized by Securitize, among the assets that can be held and used on Arc.

The ARC token

Arc has a native token even though it is not needed for fees. Circle said it completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens in the week of the launch. It describes ARC as "a digital commodity intended to act as the native coordination mechanism for security, utility, and governance on Arc, with network fees remaining payable in USDC."

The token has been sold privately. Circle's first-quarter results on May 11, 2026 disclosed agreements to sell 740 million ARC tokens for $222 million, a $3 billion fully diluted network valuation, to investors led by a16z crypto.

Circle is explicit that the mint "is not a commitment to publicly launch ARC." Nothing announced so far makes ARC available to buy on an exchange. Any token offered to the public as ARC today should be treated with suspicion.

What it means if you hold or buy USDC

USDC on Arc is issued by Circle, like USDC on any other supported chain. The Arc documentation says the gas token and the familiar six-decimal token interface "are not two separate tokens" and share the same balance.

The practical question is the network, not the token. A stablecoin sent on the wrong chain can end up at an address the receiving exchange does not monitor. Before withdrawing USDC to Arc, or depositing it from Arc, check that both sides list Arc as a supported network. Circle's August release named several exchanges and wallets as integrating with Arc, but support varies by platform and country.

For anyone who only buys and holds USDC on an exchange, nothing changes. The token, the issuer and the dollar redemption model are the same. Our stablecoins guide covers how that model works, and the layer 1 vs layer 2 explainer covers where a network like Arc fits among other chains.

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