Circle launched Arc's public mainnet on Sept. 16, 2026, bringing an EVM-compatible Layer 1 for stablecoin payments, tokenized assets, lending, trading, foreign exchange and automated transactions into production. Arc uses USDC for transaction fees and settlement, offering dollar-denominated costs and deterministic settlement in under one second through an initially permissioned proof-of-authority validator model. The network began with 11 external validators, including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard and DTCC, and more than 100 applications created before launch. Arc's testnet processed about 735 million transactions before mainnet, including more than 74.1 million over 30 days. Circle completed a 10 billion ARC genesis mint in the United States, but ARC is not trading, has no listing date and has not been made available publicly. Arc's ability to retain payment and tokenized-asset flows will determine whether early USDC activity becomes sustained network demand.