Circle launched Arc, its Layer-1 blockchain, on September 16, 2026, with BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, DTCC, and Standard Chartered as founding validators. The platform is designed for institutional dollar payments, with gas fees paid in USDC and sub-second deterministic finality. At genesis, 10 billion ARC tokens were minted, and protocols like Aave V4, Morpho, and Uniswap are already live on the network. Nikhil Chandhok, Circle’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, argues that stablecoins are real money, a claim bolstered by the US federal regulatory framework of the GENIUS Act.
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