stable coins

Story: Circle Launches Arc Mainnet: USDC Gas Token Powers Next-Gen Blockchain for Institutions

By Pankaj K

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What Arc Actually Supports. The stablecoin lineup on Arc is wide. Over 20 fiat stablecoins are supported natively, including…

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Who Showed Up Before the Mainnet. The public testnet kicked off in October 2025. Over 100 companies joined — BlackRock, Goldman…

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The ARC Token Question. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens through a genesis mint. Big number.

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Circle went live with Arc mainnet. It's a layer-1 blockchain, and it runs on USDC as the native gas token. Not a test. Not a soft launch. The real thing.

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Arc is built to handle stablecoin payments and financial market transactions, with a specific focus on what Circle calls "agentic" transactions — the kind of automated,…

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Jeremy Allaire, Circle's CEO, called the Arc launch the most significant since USDC itself went live.

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Interoperability runs through Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, known as CCTP, and its Gateway product. Together, those tools connect Arc to more than 20 blockchains.

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The public testnet kicked off in October 2025. Over 100 companies joined — BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, and Visa among them. That's not a small list.

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That kind of institutional engagement is worth paying attention to. Stablecoin infrastructure has attracted a lot of hype over the years, but actual participation from Goldman…

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See also: Circle and Coinbase Plunge 10% as Senate Rejects CLARITY Act Vote

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Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens through a genesis mint. Big number. But the company was quick to clarify — this doesn't mean a public token launch is coming. At least not now.

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Whether that holds is unclear. Token launches have a way of materializing after exactly this kind of "we're not saying yes" language.

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The longer-term plan does include a shift from Proof of Authority to Proof of Stake by 2027.

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Arc also plans to widen participation in network operations generally, though specifics on that are thin right now.

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Read also: Nilesh Khatwani Joins Revolut to Spearhead UAE Institutional Crypto Expansion

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