stable coins

Story: Circle Launches Arc Blockchain With BlackRock and Visa as Validators at $3B Valuation

By Steven Anderson

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The Fee Model, the Consensus Engine, and the Privacy Stack. Arc's fee structure borrows from Ethereum's EIP-1559 playbook — a weighted moving average of…

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ARC Token Presale, the $3 Billion Valuation, and What BlackRock Plans to Do. The ARC token — Arc's native coordination mechanism — launched with an initial supply of 10…

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Circle dropped its new blockchain, Arc, and the validator list alone is enough to make you do a double take. BlackRock. Visa. Mastercard. DTCC. SBI Group. MoneyGram.

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The platform went live on September 16, 2026, targeting institutional stablecoin use specifically.

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Arc had already been running a public testnet since October 2025. By the time it moved to private mainnet, it had processed over half a billion transactions.

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Arc's fee structure borrows from Ethereum's EIP-1559 playbook — a weighted moving average of network demand keeps fees low and predictable.

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Under the hood, the consensus layer runs on Malachite, a Byzantine Fault Tolerant engine. Circle plans to transition eventually to a permissioned Proof-of-Stake mechanism, though…

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Privacy is handled through a modular system that tries to thread a needle: confidential transfers hide transaction amounts while keeping addresses visible.

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The ARC token — Arc's native coordination mechanism — launched with an initial supply of 10 billion tokens. The split: 60% goes to the ecosystem, 25% to Circle, 15% to a reserve.

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See also: Western Unions Stablecard Goes Live in 37 Markets, Eyes 60 by Year-End

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ARC isn't meant to be a speculative asset, at least not by Circle's framing. It's supposed to function as an incentive layer for validators and participants.

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BlackRock plans to deploy its tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, on Arc. That's a concrete use case, not a vague expression of interest.

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Circle's existing tools, Mint and Gateway, enable USDC conversion and transfer across blockchains.

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Regulatory clarity is a big part of Circle's bet here. The company sees clearer rules — wherever they come from — as a direct catalyst for the kind of institutional adoption Arc…

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See also: Coinbase Brings 4,000 US Stocks to UK With Zero-Commission 24/5 Trading

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