Let's take a moment to focus on less time-sensitive things.
Here's my report on
– why @circle’s @arc is a big thing
– if it is a Plasma thesis killer
[ Research series ] ↓
For years, @circle powered others’ ecosystems - Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Base.
Now it’s building its own Layer-1: a public chain where USDC itself is the gas token.
No native volatile coin, no speculative tokenomics, just programmable dollars moving at sub-second speed.
Arc Public Testnet is live.
@Arc is an open Layer-1 blockchain designed to serve as the Economic OS for the internet, uniting programmable money and onchain innovation with real-world economic activity.
Arc is uniquely suited to be a new trusted foundation for:
→ Lending and financial services
→ Capital markets
→ Tokenized asset issuance
→ Stablecoin settlement worldwide
With deterministic sub-second finality, stablecoins as native gas, and opt-in configurable privacy, Arc is purpose-built to meet the needs of the global financial system.
It’s built for a world where:
→ Financial apps are as accessible as email
→ Dollars, euros, pesos, and other fiat currencies move instantly
→ Private transactions that support compliance happen at scale
→ AI agents transact and coordinate commercial activity autonomously
Arc testnet is already seeing participation from leading companies across capital markets, global payments and technology platforms, and full-stack developer infrastructure providers.
Guided by Circle’s vision of making money truly open and programmable, Arc is public internet infrastructure that invites everyone to build, coordinate, and transact onchain.
Start building:
Read the release:
When @circle announced @arc, I thought finally, the stablecoin issuer stopped renting blockspace and started building its own economy.
The deeper I looked, the clearer it became:
Arc is Circle’s bid to turn USDC into infrastructure.
They call @arc the Economic Operating System for the Internet.
Grand phrasing, but underneath that, it’s a pragmatic play - to make stablecoin rails feel like enterprise payment rails.
Predictable fees. Institutional validators. Regulatory visibility.
Arc runs on Malachite BFT, a consensus engine written in Rust.
Transactions finalize in under 350 milliseconds.
No chain reorganizations, no probabilistic finality - the kind of determinism banks expect.
Throughput? 3,000+ TPS today, with headroom for 10,000.
And the gas? USDC.
Every transaction costs roughly a cent, always denominated in dollars.
No fee volatility. No need to explain to auditors why a payment suddenly cost 50x more overnight.
It’s mundane. The absence of volatility - the dull consistency - is the feature, not the flaw. Which is precisely the point.
Technically, @arc integrates the usual suspects - @wormhole, @LayerZero_Core, @StargateFinance, @chainlink - for interoperability.
And through Fireblocks, 2,400+ financial institutions already have custody access.
In short, Arc launched with pipes already connected.
But @circle built @arc for institutions, not retail.
And the testnet roster shows over 100 participants, from BlackRock and Goldman Sachs to Visa, Mastercard, AWS, and HSBC.
Appears to be an early version of Wall Street plugging into crypto rails without the crypto chaos.
We’re excited to highlight the first 11 Architects building on Arc public testnet, working to enable use cases across lending, capital markets, FX, payments, and more on Arc.
@zkp2p: Onchain protocol for trustless and permissionless on/off ramping between fiat and stablecoins.
@0xSequence: A universal platform for crypto transactions that makes sending and spending digital assets as simple as 1-click.
@superfaceai: Connectivity platform for agentic solutions.
@BlockradarHQ: Noncustodial, developer-first WaaS APIs that abstracts blockchain complexity.
@CopperxHQ: Stablecoin neobank for businesses to send and receive funds globally.
@Crossmint: Enterprise-grade embedded wallets, onramps, checkout, and agentic commerce APIs.
@Hurupayapp: Send, receive, and manage money across borders.
@get_para: Modern wallet infrastructure for fintech and crypto.
@CFiAgFinance: Personalized ag financing platform.
@Hinkal_protocol: ZK-based wallet that makes wallet tracking impossible.
@Axelar: Secure, programmable crosschain infrastructure that enables apps and assets to move seamlessly across 80+ blockchains.
Join us in building the Economic OS for the internet:
And the architecture leans compliance-first:
• Validators are permissioned institutions.
• Transactions can include confidential transfers (amounts hidden, addresses visible).
• Auditors can request viewing keys.
• TEEs protect sensitive computation.
Privacy and regulation don’t have to be enemies - Arc treats them as parameters.
Another under-the-radar piece: the FX engine - @arc’s on-chain foreign-exchange layer that enables real-time conversion between regional stablecoins like JPYC, BRLA, and MXNB.
Blockchain rebuilt as an FX settlement layer... interesting!
Regulatory alignment is also enabled from day one:
• Compliant with the 2025 GENIUS Act
• MiCA readiness, and
• Elliptic-powered AML monitoring.
Circle isn’t chasing degen liquidity; it’s attempting to earn trust from compliance teams.
To understand Arc better, I needed a point of contrast - another chain that also starts from the stablecoin layer outward, rather than treating stablecoins as just “assets on top.”
Because once you compare systems built around money to systems that simply host money, the design choices become a lot clearer.
That’s when the comparison to @Plasma made sense.
Both are stablecoin-first chains - just built for different parts of the value flow.
• Plasma optimizes spendability - zero-fee USDT transfers, configurable gas tokens, confidential payments, deep liquidity from day one.
• Arc optimizes settlement - USDC as gas, deterministic finality, compliance tooling, and FX rails.
Same asset class, different layers of the stablecoin stack.
Yet for all the polish, risks remain:
• Still in testnet; mainnet due 2026.
• Centralized validator set.
• Circle’s own financial fragility (negative margins, distress-zone Z-Score).
• Heavy dependence on USDC interest income.
The tech is elegant, but the business still breathes macro air.
So how should we think about @arc?
It won’t dethrone Ethereum or Solana. It’s building a parallel track - the institutional blockchain stack - where compliance is the feature, not the concession.
If Ethereum is the internet of value, Arc aims to be the internet of balance sheets.
Circle’s bet is simple:
If money is going on-chain, it might as well settle in dollars - their dollars.
In the end, @arc’s success won’t be measured in TVL charts or token price (there’s no token).
It’ll be measured in how many trillions move across it quietly.
Arc is built for institutions that never wanted “crypto” in the first place.
It doesn’t want to be the next big thing in crypto, it wants to be the quiet thing behind everything big.
In a world where stablecoins settle payrolls, invoices, and bond trades, the winning chain won’t be the fastest, it’ll be the most trusted.
@arc appears to be @circle’s bid to be that chain.
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