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Arc and Circle Infrastructure
Arc will be the open, scalable blockchain network at the center of Circle’s vision for internet-native economic infrastructure. We are launching Arc at an inflection point when distributed networks are beginning to support more of the world’s economic activity. This activity is moving beyond payments into areas such as capital formation, contracts, and labor coordination.
We designed Arc as the economic operating system (Economic OS) of the internet. Over time, we believe it can help foster a broader platform shift that could be as profound as the original launch of the internet and subsequent developments of social, mobile, cloud, and AI platforms.
Arc builds on Circle’s unwavering support of the third-party blockchain ecosystems where USDC is heavily used today. From a user’s standpoint, Arc complements these networks with several unique design characteristics that address the needs of traditional commerce, including:
- USDC-denominated transaction fees. Eliminates the need to hold and use exotic, potentially volatile tokens to pay network “gas” fees.
- “Deterministic” settlement finality. Provides clear, final settlement in less than one second, consistent with established international principles for defining settlement finality.
- Opt-in privacy. Integrates privacy-preserving technologies to enable sensitive traditional financial workflows and support institutional compliance programs.
We are still at the very beginning of Arc’s journey. Arc’s testnet went live in October 2025, with more than 100 leading companies across major sectors of the global financial system and onchain economy signing on to engage. Collectively, these firms manage hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets, facilitate vast global payment flows, and power billions of transactions every day.
Spanning the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the geographic diversity of testnet participants highlights a defining strength of Arc: it is purpose-built to connect every local market to the global economy, which in time will translate into geographic diversification and technological sovereignty. Arc presents the opportunity for every type of company to build on enterprise-grade network infrastructure, advancing a shared vision of a more open, inclusive, and efficient global economic system.
Early Arc partners represent the following categories.
Stablecoin and asset issuers
Arc is designed as a foundation for issuers of fiat stablecoins, along with tokenized equities, credit instruments, money market funds, and more. Central to this is Arc’s roadmap for stablecoins as tokens for gas payments, as well as native infrastructure for core stablecoin swaps and FX liquidity. Beyond USDC, EURC, and USYC, we envision Arc becoming the home for other stablecoin issuers around the world.
Developers
Many leading ecosystem players that provide developer tools and blockchain infrastructure are already bringing applications and solutions to Arc. Testnet participants are actively building across AI, digital wallets, tooling, cross-chain services, and core network infrastructure.
Digital asset markets and liquidity
Foundational to Arc are major protocols, venues, and services that underpin existing digital asset markets. These include exchanges, market makers, over-the-counter (OTC) firms, and borrow/lend and yield protocols.
Global payments, technology, and fintech
Payments is a key Arc use case, as it enables more frictionless payment utility for people, businesses, and institutions. That includes both today’s payment flows and tomorrow’s agentic AI systems in which autonomous agents can send, exchange, and settle value globally in real time. Early Arc participants include technology leaders, fintechs, cross-border payments firms, retail and B2B payment networks, remittance companies, ecommerce, and more.
Capital markets
Capital markets power the foundation of our economic system. We see Arc as a future home for both digital asset and traditional markets, from equities and fixed income to commodities and more, across cash and derivatives. Moving traditional markets onchain can pave the way for significant improvements in efficiency, innovation, reach, and resiliency. We are pleased to have leading capital markets firms engaging with Arc at this early stage.
Banks, asset managers, and insurers
Traditional financial firms around the world can benefit by shifting activity to an internet-native economic operating system, with opportunities to improve lending, capital management, and risk allocation. Many leading banks, asset managers, and insurers are already experimenting with Arc.
In 2026, we will work with these and new partners and continue to enhance Arc with features that optimize it as global-scale economic infrastructure.
In addition to Arc, Circle offers a full-stack platform of products that businesses, developers, and other third parties can use as building blocks to create their own apps and connect them across the internet financial system.
These products include our stablecoins, wallets, cross-chain interoperability solutions, and more. Along with our compliance-first approach, this neutral, interoperable, ecosystem-wide “shareware” approach has guided Circle since our founding and remains central to our long-term vision.
Circle has grown in tandem with developers on many of the most popular blockchain networks, with USDC becoming the default stablecoin and developer infrastructure for early adopters already engaged in building the internet financial system. Data from across the ecosystem indicates the important role Circle plays in driving shared success and growth.
As of December 14, 2025, USDC is natively available on 30 blockchain networks. Our Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) enables seamless USDC transfers across 18 blockchains and processed $31 billion in transactions in the third quarter of 2025, up 740% year-over-year.38
Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol
In recent years, many blockchains have emerged to provide optionality for different users and use cases. The downside of this is that many blockchains are not inherently compatible, which can create a fragmented experience for users that want to move value across networks. Circle launched CCTP in 2023 to solve this fragmentation challenge. CCTP enables USDC to easily flow across 18 blockchains through native burning and minting, so it is effectively teleported from one blockchain to another almost instantly and with no friction for the user. This interoperability positions USDC as the go-to stablecoin as more economic coordination takes place onchain.
Blockchains with CCTP availability
Arc and third-party blockchains feature deep integration with the rest of the Circle platform. These products and services include:
Circle Mint
Circle Mint enables account holders to convert fiat funds from a bank account instantly and automatically to USDC and EURC.39
Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP)
CCTP enables USDC to flow natively 1:1 across supported blockchains, unifying liquidity and simplifying user experience.
Wallets
Our secure, frictionless wallets can be tailored to individual apps that empower users to send, receive, and transact with digital assets.
Contracts
A curated library of smart contracts that makes it easier to harness the programmability of the internet financial system.
Gateway
Enables USDC holders to see a single, unified balance of USDC held across multiple blockchains.
Circle Payments Network (CPN)
Connecting banks, PSPs, VASPs, and enterprises to enable consumer, business, and institutional payment use cases via stablecoins. Learn more about CPN here.
38. Source: Company data.
39. Instant settlement is possible, provided, however, that instant settlement programs are offered by the participating bank(s).