Introducing Arc: an open Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for stablecoin finance that delivers the performance and trust to meet enterprise-grade demands onchain.
For decades, traditional financial systems have struggled with fragmentation, opacity, and limited access. Over the past ten years, public blockchains have been used to address these issues through programmable money and transparent, permissionless infrastructure. However, for the vast majority of fintechs, payment service providers (PSPs), financial institutions, and global enterprises, the promise of stablecoin finance often collides with the limitations of these systems.
Time and again, we hear the same concerns from our partners:
“We need predictable fees we can plan around.”
“Our treasury team can’t hold volatile crypto assets to pay gas fees.”
“We can’t move sensitive payment data on public rails.”
“Who do we call if we need help with something?”
Today, launching even basic onchain financial applications means relying on blockchains that weren’t designed with stablecoins in mind. Despite advances in crosschain interoperability, stablecoin liquidity remains fundamentally siloed, limiting capital efficiency. Bringing new stablecoin applications to market is equally challenging, typically requiring coordination with multiple ecosystem partners across different blockchains — each with its own priorities — making it difficult to scale user acquisition and build lasting network effects.
At Circle, we’ve spent years working hand-in-hand with both large enterprises and frontier stablecoin builders — helping them innovate with stablecoins, settle trillions in transactions, and create new onchain experiences that serve real customers around the world. Yet the vast majority of market opportunities for stablecoins remain untapped, with countless businesses and users still stuck on the sidelines.
One truth has become clear: the industry needs blockchain infrastructure purpose-built for stablecoin finance.
Introducing Arc
Today, we’re proud to introduce Arc, a new open Layer-1 blockchain designed from the ground up to serve the next era of stablecoin-native applications. Built by Circle to stand alone as its own independent ecosystem, Arc introduces a new kind of blockchain architecture — one that’s optimized for stablecoin finance from line one:
- USDC as native gas: Low, predictable, dollar-denominated fees — no volatile crypto required
- Built-in FX engine: Institutional-grade RFQ system for price discovery and 24/7 PvP onchain settlement
- Instant finality: Deterministic sub-second settlement finality powered by Malachite, a highly performant consensus engine
- Opt-in privacy: Selectively shielded balances and transactions so users and enterprises can stay compliant with their own obligations
- Full Circle platform integration: Native support for Circle Payments Network (CPN), USDC, EURC, USYC1, Mint, Wallets, Contracts, CCTP, Gateway, Paymaster, and more
Far more than just a blockchain for USDC, Arc is designed to be the home for all forms of digital money and tokenized value.
From emerging stableswap protocols to tokenized equities, commodities, and real estate, Arc provides all kinds of stablecoin issuers and builders with a robust environment to launch, collaborate, and scale with confidence. Arc is designed to meet the needs of global businesses without compromising openness or other critical aspects of the developer experience.
To that end, Arc is EVM-compatible, so developers can build using the same frameworks and tooling they know and trust. Open and composable, Arc offers the freedom to deploy, transact, and innovate while maintaining interoperability with the broader multichain ecosystem.
Arc is where trusted digital money meets enterprise-grade onchain infrastructure.
From proven research to open innovation
As part of our mission-driven commitment to advancing blockchain infrastructure, we're excited to share that the Malachite team from Informal Systems has joined Circle, bringing their expertise and IP to help build Arc and continue Malachite development.
Informal Systems is known for its pioneering work in Byzantine Fault Tolerance, formal verification, and consensus design. Arc is based on Malachite’s high-performance consensus engine — now under Circle’s stewardship.
As we remain committed to open-source development, the core software for Arc will be released under a permissive license, enabling the broader developer community to contribute, extend, and build on top. This transparency is fundamental to our belief in permissionless innovation and long-term infrastructure credibility.
What you can build on Arc
Arc is designed to catalyze a new class of stablecoin-native applications. Here are just a few of the powerful use cases we’re excited to see builders bring to life on Arc:
Cross-border payments and payouts
Arc provides a transformative foundation for international payments. With fiat-backed stablecoins and instant, low-cost settlement, businesses can streamline global money movement. For organizations already connected to Circle Payments Network (CPN), Arc offers a powerful onchain settlement layer. And with its FX engine providing programmatic conversion between stablecoins, Arc lays the groundwork for automated offramping into local fiat currencies.
Stablecoin FX perpetuals
Builders can use Arc to create perpetual futures markets centered entirely on stablecoin pairs, enabling traders to go long and short with leverage across global currency markets. Arc’s built-in FX engine compliments these markets, helping to power real-time quoting, pricing logic, and atomic PvP settlement across stablecoins, and as more local stablecoin issuers deploy on Arc, these markets can expand to support deeper liquidity and more diverse currency pairs.
Onchain credit with offchain trust
Arc makes it possible to build trusted credit infrastructure onchain by giving developers the primitives they need to combine stablecoins with offchain trust signals. Builders can design lending protocols that integrate identity, cash flow history, reputation systems, or external underwriting models to responsibly extend credit to users and businesses underserved by traditional credit markets.
Capital markets settlement and tokenized collateral
Arc is designed to bring traditional capital markets infrastructure — where speed, auditability, and regulatory alignment are paramount — onchain. With USDC and USYC as day-one native assets, Arc can enable instant delivery-versus-payment (DvP) and margin collateral for a wide range of tokenized financial instruments, from securities and treasuries to commodities and structured products.
Agentic commerce and programmatic payments
With predictable gas fees in USDC, sub-second finality, and privacy controls, developers can build agentic systems that embed logic and verifiable identity directly into onchain payment workflows. From automated subscriptions to programmable procurement and AI-mediated marketplaces, Arc offers a secure, composable foundation for a future where machines transact on our behalf, transparently and efficiently.
Principles for a new financial era
Arc is more than a new blockchain. It’s a new approach to how financial infrastructure should be built and governed. At its core are five tenets that define our vision:
- Purpose-built, not general-purpose: Arc focuses specifically on stablecoin finance use cases, including but not limited to payments, FX, and capital markets.
- Open and composable by default: While enterprise-ready, Arc is open to all developers. Anyone can build, transact, integrate, and contribute to the Arc ecosystem.
- Market-neutral and multichain-aligned: Arc strengthens the broader multichain ecosystem by unlocking new use cases, partners, and institutional liquidity onchain. Circle remains committed to growing USDC connecting Arc to stablecoin apps on those blockchains.
- Built to coordinate, not control: Arc aligns partners across fintechs, PSPs, banks, enterprises, and stablecoin issuers to achieve something bigger than the sum of their parts. It’s not a walled garden; it’s an open infrastructure layer to usher in a new era of stablecoin finance.
- Trusted infrastructure, end-to-end: Arc is designed for reliability and long-term operational excellence. The blockchain is architected by the same principles of transparency and trust that define Circle.
Get ready to build on Arc
Whether you’re building new financial applications, unlocking new forms of value exchange, or otherwise modernizing global money movement, Arc provides the stablecoin-native foundation to go further, faster.
Arc will enter private testnet in the coming weeks. Public testnet is expected this fall and mainnet beta in 2026. Visit arcnetwork.xyz to request early access.
Arc is coming. Let’s build the new internet financial system together.
1. USYC is a digital asset token. Each USYC token serves as a digital representation of a share of the Hashnote International Short Duration Fund Ltd. (the “Fund”), a Cayman Islands registered mutual fund. The Fund has appointed Circle International Bermuda Limited (“CIBL”), a Bermuda Monetary Authority licensed digital asset business, as its token administrator, responsible for the management of USYC on behalf of the Fund. Shares of the Fund and USYC are only available to non-U.S. Persons, as defined under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Additional eligibility restrictions may apply. The information provided herein is solely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, financial instrument, or other product.
Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws.
Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only. All product features may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without prior notice, at any time and at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee or investment advice.
