Circle's Arc Blockchain Revolutionizes Institutional Crypto Interactions
Circle has launched its brand-new Layer 1 blockchain, Arc, which promises to revolutionize the way institutions interact with cryptocurrency. The Arc mainnet went live on September 16, 2026, and it's the first blockchain where every transaction fee is paid in USDC instead of a volatile crypto token.
The defining feature of Arc is who gets to run it. Unlike other blockchains, which open validation to anyone willing to stake tokens, Circle has restricted block production to a fixed group of regulated financial institutions. This structure trades decentralization for compliance and predictability.
Arc runs on proof-of-authority consensus across a permissioned set of 11 institutions plus Circle, including BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa, and Worldpay. The network claims deterministic finality in under one second with no reorganization risk, with internal benchmarks showing finality below 350 milliseconds and throughput above 3,000 transactions per second.
The Arc blockchain charges gas fees in USDC at approximately one cent per transaction, which is a significant advantage for institutions that prefer predictable costs. The network's fee documentation sets a base fee target of about $0.01 per transaction, capped at 20,000 Gwei. Circle has also carried out a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens in the United States this week as a technical milestone.