Circle Activates Arc Blockchain with Over 100 Live Apps
Circle has launched its Layer 1 blockchain, Arc, after more than a year of development. The public mainnet went live on Wednesday with over 100 applications and a founding validator cohort that includes BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, and DTCC.
The company minted the entire opening supply of 10 billion ARC tokens in the U.S. this week. Despite the launch, Circle emphasized that it has not committed to publicly launching the token, stating that network fees remain payable in USDC.
The founding validator cohort is a who's who of traditional finance, with major players like BlackRock and Visa on board. The validator set is permissioned, and confidential transactions with view keys are in development for a network-wide release.
Circle first announced its plans to build Arc in August 2025, and the testnet has handled over 700 million transactions in less than a year. The chain is EVM-compatible, allowing Solidity contracts written elsewhere to run on it unchanged.