Circle Launches Arc Mainnet, an Economic Operating System for the Internet
September 16, 2026
NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 16, 2026 – Circle Internet Group, Inc. (NYSE: CRCL) today announced the public mainnet launch of Arc, an open Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for financial markets, real-time money movement, and agentic economic activity. Arc launches with native integration into Circle’s full-stack platform (including USDC, with more than $74 billion in circulation); a founding validator cohort drawn from the institutions that run global finance; more than 100 applications; and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders live on day one.
“Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself,” said Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Circle.
Six design choices
- Gas in dollars. Fees are paid in USDC, with no volatile native token required.
- Sub-second finality. Deterministic, instant settlement. Final means final.
- Opt-in privacy. Confidential transactions and balances with view keys; in development for network-wide release.
- Issuers and interoperability. A home for USDC, EURC, and tokenized real-world assets, with Circle StableFX providing 24/7 cross-currency settlement.
- Agentic economic activity. The first blockchain designed from genesis for AI agents as economic actors.
- Institutional security. Post-quantum signatures supported today and deterministic consensus built to financial market standards.
Founding validators
BlackRock, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa, and Worldpay (now Global Payments), alongside Circle.
Agentic economy
Agents are already performing economic tasks with Circle’s open, programmable payments products. USDC accounts for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume. Since Circle Agent Stack launched in May 2026, the overwhelming majority of agent-to-agent payments settling over the x402 standard have settled in USDC.
- Circle Agent Stack gives developers and agents policy-controlled Agent Wallets, Nanopayments powered by Circle Gateway, and an emerging Agent Marketplace.
- Arc Portal lets people fund agent wallets, set spend limits, and delegate onchain tasks with visibility and control.
- AgentVM is being designed so that agents can work with sensitive data in a protected environment.
Developer tools
- Arc Studio is an onchain coding agent that generates applications with smart contracts and deployment-ready code.
- Arc App Kits is a unified SDK for payments, swaps, onramps, and yield.
Arc’s testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year. Arc is fully EVM-compatible.
Roadmap
- Network Sectors: Privacy Sector, Payment Sector (targeting 100,000+ TPS), and Agent Sector.
- Proof of stake and the ARC token. Circle completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens. Network fees remain payable in USDC. Transition from Proof of Authority toward Proof of Stake expected in 2027.
- Post-quantum resilience. Arc supports post-quantum signatures today.