What Is Arc Blockchain by Circle? A Simple Guide

Note: Arc is live as a test network right now (as of late June 2026). Its main network is not open to the public at the time of writing.

Circle spent ten years putting its dollar coin, USDC, on other people's blockchains. In August 2025, it started building its own.

That blockchain is called Arc. It is built for one job, moving stablecoins like USDC quickly and cheaply. By mid-2026 it had raised $222 million from big names like a16z, BlackRock, and Apollo. More than 100 companies had signed up to test it. And it had published plans for its own token.

This guide explains what Arc is, how it works, who is backing it, and the real risks behind the headlines. No jargon.

Arc is an open blockchain built by Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin. It is a Layer-1 network, which means it is a base blockchain in its own right, not an add-on to another chain.

Arc is made for stablecoin payments, currency swaps, and digital assets, and it uses USDC to pay network fees. Circle announced Arc on 12 August 2025 and calls it an "Economic OS for the internet."

Most blockchains try to do everything at once, from games to art to trading. Arc does one thing. It moves digital dollars. The thesis is that if stablecoins are going to move trillions of dollars, they need rails built for exactly that, with steady fees, instant payments, and the controls that banks need to take part.

Three parts sit at the heart of Arc:

1. The Arc network is the blockchain itself, where payments happen.
2. Stablecoins (USDC first, then the euro coin EURC and others) are the money that moves on it.
3. The ARC token is a separate coin that helps secure and run the network.

Circle plugs Arc straight into the rest of Circle's products. That includes USDC, the euro stablecoin EURC, a digital money-market token called USYC, a tool for moving USDC between chains (CCTP), and the Circle Payments Network. Arc is the home Circle built so all of these have a place made for them, instead of renting space on Ethereum.

Circle built Arc for two reasons. Moving stablecoins on normal blockchains is clunky. And owning the road is worth more than renting it.

Think about what it takes to send USDC today. You hold a coin worth one dollar, but you pay the network fee in ETH, TRX, or SOL, coins whose prices move on their own. On many chains a payment can also be reversed for a short time after it looks done. And privacy is all or nothing, which suits neither an open chain nor a bank that needs to keep some details quiet. For a payments company, all of that friction is a problem worth fixing.

There is also a business reason, and it is the bigger one.

Circle went public in June 2025 (its stock ticker is CRCL). It needed a second way to make money beyond simply issuing USDC and earning interest on the cash behind it. The risk to that main business is copycats. New stablecoin laws, like the US GENIUS Act, make it easier for banks and other firms to launch their own dollar coins. If everyone can issue a dollar coin, being one more issuer is worth less. Owning the network is the protection. Arc lets Circle earn money from moving the money, not just from holding it.

Circle's CEO, Jeremy Allaire said, "We built the highways for USDC. Now we're opening them to other stablecoin and real-world asset issuers.”

So, Arc is not only for USDC. It is meant to be shared rails that other coin issuers and asset managers can use, with Circle holding the keys.

Arc strips a blockchain down to what stablecoin payments actually need, then makes those few things very good.

• Steady fees
• Instant, final payments
• Familiar tools for builders
• Privacy when you want it

On Arc, you pay network fees in USDC. Because the fee is priced in dollars, the cost of a payment does not jump around with the crypto market. A payment that costs a fraction of a cent today costs about the same tomorrow.

There is a clever detail underneath that most guides miss. Even though you pay in USDC, the network turns those fees into ARC tokens, then splits them between rewards for the computers running the network and a permanent "burn" that removes tokens from supply.

So the experience stays dollar-steady for you, while the value of all that activity flows to the ARC token in the background. Hold that thought for the token section.

Arc reaches agreement using a system called Malachite. It is a fast, well-tested method for getting many computers to agree on the same record. Circle hired the team that built Malachite, from a company called Informal Systems, in 2025.

So, once a payment is done on Arc, it is done. There is no window where the chain rewrites itself and undoes your payment minutes later, which can happen on some other chains.

Here is how the test network has performed. Treat these as lab results with small setups, not promises for the live network.

The more computers you add, the slower it gets, which is normal for this kind of system. The live network will run a larger, carefully vetted set of computers, so expect real speeds nearer the slower end and not the 10,000 headline.

Arc is EVM-compatible, which means it speaks the same language as Ethereum. Builders can reuse the contracts and tools they already know, like Solidity, Hardhat, and Foundry.

Under the hood it runs on a piece of software called Reth. There is no new language to learn. In most cases, anything that runs on Ethereum can run on Arc with small changes.

Open blockchains show every amount to everyone, which does not work for serious payments. Arc's answer is private transfers you can switch on. The amount in a payment can be hidden while the wallet addresses stay visible. So balances stay private, but the network can still be checked.

Circle goes further with a private area of the chain for running confidential contracts. Banks can keep deals private, while auditors and regulators can be given special keys to look inside. The aim is to please both sides. Privacy for the company, oversight for the regulator.

This is the feature most other guides barely mention, and it may be the most useful one. StableFX is a built-in tool for swapping one stablecoin for another, like US dollars (USDC) to euros (EURC), or to a local-currency coin.

It works like a professional trading desk, not a simple swap button. Trading firms compete to offer the best price. Then the swap settles on the chain, around the clock, with both sides changing hands at the exact same moment, or not at all. That removes the risk of one side paying and the other not.

Today, swapping currencies across borders runs through a chain of banks with cut-off times and delays. StableFX is Circle's bet that this moves onto the blockchain and runs 24/7.

On 11 May 2026, Circle published the ARC token whitepaper and closed a $222 million token sale, which valued all the tokens together at $3 billion.

If you have read older guides that say Arc has "no token," they were written before this. Treat them as old news.

ARC is the coin that helps run the network. It is kept separate from USDC on purpose. USDC stays the money you spend and pay fees with. ARC has four jobs:

1. Secures the network through staking
2. Lets holders vote on changes
3. Captures a share of network fees
4. Gives perks like fee discounts

Fees paid in USDC get turned into ARC and partly burned, so the more the network is used, the more ARC gets bought up and removed.

Circle was reportedly the first public company to run a token sale for its own blockchain, which shows how unusual this move is.

At the start, the computers that run Arc are a hand-picked group of known, approved companies. The whitepaper lays out a plan to switch to a "staking" model later, where ARC holders lock up their tokens to help secure the network and earn rewards.

Reporting around the deal ties this switch to roughly 2028, though Circle has been careful not to promise a hard date for fully opening up.

Until then, Circle is in charge. It controls upgrades, decides who runs the network, and handles problems. The plan is to hand more control to token holders as the network grows up. Whether that handover really happens, and how fast, is the big open question.

One legal note worth knowing is that the whitepaper says plainly that the ARC token is not a share in Circle, gives no claim on the company, and has not been approved by New York's financial regulator.

Arc opened its public test network in October 2025 with more than 100 companies on board, and the names are the real story. Circle lined up firms from Wall Street, payments, crypto, and even AI.

• Banks and asset managers: BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, State Street, Invesco, WisdomTree.
• Payments and tech: Visa, Mastercard, Fiserv, Nuvei, and Amazon Web Services on the infrastructure side.
• Markets and custody: Apollo, Intercontinental Exchange (the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange), Fireblocks, BitGo, Securitize, Chainlink.
• Exchanges and trading firms: Kraken, Robinhood, Wintermute, Galaxy Digital.
• AI: Anthropic, building agent-driven payments with the Claude Agent SDK.

The companies above are testing the network. The backers who put money into the ARC token are a different (sometimes overlapping) group, led by a16z crypto and including BlackRock, Apollo, Intercontinental Exchange, Standard Chartered, SBI, ARK Invest, Janus Henderson, and Bullish. BlackRock and Standard Chartered are on both lists. Visa, Goldman, AWS, and Anthropic are testers, not backers.

Arc is not alone. A group of "stablechains," blockchains built mainly for stablecoins, appeared in 2025 and 2026, each with a heavyweight backer.

Arc aims at four kinds of money work, and they are concrete, not vague.

Move USDC in under a second with steady, tiny fees. This is the closest thing yet to sending money like you send an email, especially across borders, where bank transfers are slow today.

Swap between dollar, euro, and local-currency stablecoins through StableFX, 24/7, with both sides settling at the same moment.

Settle digital versions of funds, government bonds, and other real-world assets. USYC, Circle's digital money-market token, is built into Arc, which hints at where this is heading.

This is the newest idea. With Anthropic involved, Arc is setting up for software agents that pay each other in tiny, frequent amounts. Steady sub-cent fees and instant settlement matter a lot when the one paying is a piece of software.

If you want to go from reading about Arc to actually touching it, here is the next step. Builders can connect to the public test network today and try a normal smart contract using Foundry or Hardhat, since Arc works with Ethereum's tools. Start with Circle's developer docs at docs.arc.io.

Yes. The ARC token launched through a $222 million sale in May 2026, which valued all the tokens at $3 billion. It is separate from USDC and is used for securing the network, voting, and earning a share of fees. USDC is still the coin you pay fees with.

No. Circle's ARC is a new 2026 token tied to its Arc blockchain. The old "ARC" coin that has traded since 2022 is a different project with no link to Circle. There is also a separate Bitcoin token type called ARC-20, which is a third unrelated thing.

You pay fees on Arc in USDC. Because fees are priced in dollars instead of a coin whose price jumps around, costs stay low and steady no matter what the crypto market does. This is one of Arc's main selling points over chains like Ethereum or Solana.

No. Arc is its own Layer-1 blockchain, with its own way of running and securing the network. It is not built on top of Ethereum. It reaches agreement using its own system, called Malachite, and settles payments directly.

Circle built Arc and runs it through a company called Circle Technology Services. At the start, the network is run by a hand-picked group of known, approved companies. The plan is to move to a staking model, where ARC token holders help secure the network, but there is no firm date for fully opening up.

Arc's public test network went live in October 2025. The main network is expected in 2026 but is not live as of June 2026. The clearest sign of progress is whether it launches on time and starts handling real payment volume.

Yes. Arc speaks the same language as Ethereum, so builders can reuse contracts and tools they already know, like Solidity, Hardhat, and Foundry. There is no new programming language to learn.

More than 100 companies joined the test network, including BlackRock, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, AWS, and Anthropic. The backers of the ARC token sale were led by a16z crypto and included BlackRock, Apollo, and Intercontinental Exchange.

Arc pays fees in steady USDC instead of price-swinging ETH, settles payments in under a second with no reversals, and is run by hand-picked companies instead of anyone who wants to join. It trades Ethereum's openness for speed, steady costs, and built-in rule controls aimed at big institutions.

Not at the start. Arc is run by hand-picked, Circle-approved companies and can block addresses, which critics say makes it closer to a private network than an open one. Circle has published a plan to move to a staking model, but opening up is still a future promise, not today's reality.