Circle launched the Arc mainnet on Wednesday, a Layer 1 blockchain where transaction fees are paid in USDC and blocks are produced by a permissioned consortium of regulated financial institutions including BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, Standard Chartered and thirteen other players. The chain delivers deterministic finality under one second, throughput above 3,000 transactions per second with 20 validators, and full EVM compatibility. Circle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens in the United States, having raised $222 million in a May presale at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation with a16z crypto putting in $75 million. Arc is positioning itself as the settlement layer for AI agents, with USDC accounting for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume.
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