Circle launched Arc mainnet on September 16, an open Layer-1 blockchain the company describes as "an economic operating system for the internet," purpose-built for financial markets, real-time money movement, and institutional settlement. Gas fees on the network are paid in USDC rather than a volatile native token — Circle's pitch is "gas in dollars."
The founding validator set reads like a cross-section of global finance and payments: BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Standard Chartered, Visa, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Sumitomo Corporation, Worldpay and Galaxy. BlackRock's tokenized treasury fund, BUIDL, is listed as tradeable on Arc at launch. DTCC joins as a founding validator providing clearing and settlement infrastructure; the company has also signaled — but not yet delivered — future support for tokenizing DTC-custodied assets on the network, a distinction worth holding onto as this story develops.
Circle completed the genesis mint of the ARC token this week, creating the network's full initial supply of 10 billion tokens — a technical supply figure, not a funding or asset-value metric. Circle said more than 100 applications and institutional builders were live on the network at launch.
The breadth of the validator roster — spanning custody (BlackRock), clearing (DTCC), card networks (Visa, Mastercard), cross-border remittance (MoneyGram) and multiple regional banks — makes Arc one of the more institutionally dense blockchain launches to date, and a network worth tracking closely as its participants roll out live use cases beyond the founding validator commitment itself.