On September 16, Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, switched on the mainnet of its own blockchain, Arc. CEO Jeremy Allaire called the project "a bigger opportunity" than USDC itself — even though USDC is where most of Circle's revenue comes from.
What stands out isn't the network itself but who's running it. The founding cohort of 11 validators isn't made up of crypto startups but of traditional finance heavyweights: BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, exchange operator ICE, clearinghouse DTCC, payments network MoneyGram, Japan's SBI Group, Standard Chartered and others. These firms used to be clients of public blockchains like Ethereum. Now they're signing blocks themselves — a rare move for banks of this size.
Under the hood, Arc runs on the Reth execution engine, stays Ethereum- and Solidity-compatible, but uses its own consensus layer called Malachite, finalizing blocks in under half a second. Gas fees are paid in USDC rather than a volatile token — removing a key obstacle for banks, who don't want transaction costs swinging with a coin's price.
A separate token, ARC, handles staking and governance rather than fees. Its presale, led by a16z crypto, raised $222 million at $0.30 a token, valuing the project at $3 billion against a 10-billion-token supply. Circle kept a quarter of the supply, allocated 60% to ecosystem development, and set aside the rest as a long-term reserve.
Partners have already mapped out next steps: DTCC plans to tokenize securities on Arc starting in 2027, and BlackRock intends to move part of its $2.87 billion BUIDL Treasury fund natively onto the network. There's a catch, though — Circle itself picks the validator list, and joining the network requires an invitation. For decentralization purists, that looks less like a blockchain in the traditional sense and more like a bank consortium ledger with better branding.
