Circle launched Arc mainnet on Wednesday, a Layer 1 blockchain where transaction fees are paid in USDC and blocks are produced by regulated financial institutions rather than an open validator market. The founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa and Worldpay alongside Circle. The chain is fully EVM-compatible and targets deterministic finality under one second with throughput above 3,000 transactions per second. Circle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens and raised $222 million in a presale valuing the company at $3 billion. CRCL stock fell 11.41% on launch day, giving the company a market capitalization of $21.91 billion.
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