Circle’s Arc, a Layer 1 (base blockchain network) designed for stablecoin finance, will open its public mainnet on Sept. 16 after operating as a private mainnet. Arc will use USDC for gas (transaction fees), offer finality within one second and be maintained by a permissioned validator set. The network’s 11 founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa. More than 100 institutions and ecosystem teams are already involved. BlackRock is expected to deploy its BUIDL dollar institutional digital liquidity fund on Arc, while Circle and DTCC plan to pursue tokenization of assets held in DTC custody from the second half of 2027. Fomo and edgeX have committed to launch-day support, while an Aave V4 deployment remains subject to governance approval. Meme-token launchpads including Tolly, Warp and Arcpad are competing for issuance and liquidity, with different bonding-curve, liquidity-locking and fee models. Arc’s first 90 days of public testnet activity produced more than 150 million transactions and about 1.5 million transacting wallets, but public-mainnet liquidity, bridge flows, lending deposits and active addresses remain to be established.