Circle's Arc Mainnet Launches with Big-Name Validators

Circle has launched its Arc mainnet, a significant expansion of its stablecoin-focused platform. The network is designed as an economic operating system for payments, tokenized markets, and AI agents.

The launch includes a permissioned validator set from institutions like BlackRock, DTCC, and Visa. This choice gives banks and asset managers the trust they need to move treasury, trading, and payments on-chain.

BlackRock's global head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick, said purpose-built blockchains can help accelerate adoption of digital asset use cases. He believes Arc is well-positioned to serve stablecoin and payment use cases at scale.

Arc integrates natively with Circle's platform, anchored by USDC, which has more than $74 billion in circulation. The network includes day-one trading infrastructure like Uniswap, Aero, and fomo, as well as tokenized assets such as Circle's USYC money market fund and wrapped bitcoin (cirBTC).

The Arc public testnet processed over 700 million transactions in under a year, with a community of more than 75,000 Arc House members and 1,200-plus projects built for the network.