Circle Launches Arc Mainnet with Native USDC Gas and Institutional Node Support

Stablecoin issuer Circle has officially launched its EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, Arc, positioning it as an economic operating system for the internet. The network utilizes native USDC for gas fees and features sub-second finality through the Malachite BFT consensus mechanism. Institutional giants including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, DTCC, Galaxy, and Standard Chartered serve as initial permissioned validators. While 10 billion ARC tokens were minted in the genesis block for future governance and security, Circle clarified that these tokens are not available for public sale, listing, or airdrop. Over 100 applications, including Aave and Uniswap, are live on the network at launch.