Announcement shows that the Arc mainnet, aimed at payment, trading, and on-chain automated economic activities, was officially launched on Wednesday. The company stated that on the first day, over 100 institutions and ecosystem partners had already connected to it, and USDC is directly used as the Gas token for this chain.
The first batch of validators includes financial and payment institutions.
The founding validators of Arc include BlackRock, the American Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange ICE, MasterCard, Visa, Standard Chartered Bank, SBI Group, Sumitomo, as well as Worldpay, Galaxy and other institutions. Circle positions it as a public chain for institutional use, adopting a licensed validator model, and emphasizes that this helps banks to manage funds, conduct transactions, and make confidential payments on a public chain.
ARC Completed 10 billion initial coins this week
The company disclosed that the Arc network token ARC has completed its genesis mining this week, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens. Circle also emphasized that this action does not indicate that ARC has decided to be issued to the public, but rather serves as a technical preparation for a potential transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in the future, with a target date set for 2027.
- ARC Total supply of Creation Casting: 10 billion coins
- Arc Token Pre-sale Financing: $222 Million
- Pre-sale valuation: $3 billion
Banks, DeFi, and trading platforms are synchronously connected.
The first batch of participants listed by Circle also includes financial institutions such as Bank of New York Mellon, HSBC, Societe Generale, and Dow Jones Bank. The lending scenarios are supported by Aave and Morpho. The trading side is connected by Uniswap, Aero, and fomo. Binance, Kraken, Bybit, and OKX provide the access paths, with Coinbase joining later on.
In terms of collateral, BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle's USYC have been integrated into the on-chain market. Circle also cites Dune data, stating that USDC accounts for 98.8% of what is known as "proxy-driven trading volume." Arc also provides proxy wallets, spending limits, and small payment functions.
The test network processed over 700 million transactions in one year.
Circle indicates that since the launch of the Arc test network last year, it has processed over 700 million transactions in less than a year. The company also stated that the network already supports an optional post-quantum signature feature, and more security measures are still under development.
Additional information:Circle The Chief Executive Officer, Jeremy Allaire, stated in the press release that this is "the most important release" for the company since its launch of USDC. As of now, the circulation scale of USDC is approximately 74 billion US dollars.
