Circle Opens Arc Mainnet With BlackRock, DTCC and Visa Among Eleven Founding Validators
Circle Opens Arc Mainnet With BlackRock, DTCC and Visa Among Eleven Founding Validators #
Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) launched Arc, a Layer-1 blockchain for institutional financial markets, real-time payments and AI-driven economic activity, on Wednesday, September 16, 2026.
The network went live with more than 100 institutional and ecosystem partners, including global banks, asset managers, card networks, exchanges and decentralized finance protocols. Eleven institutions join Circle as founding validators: BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Galaxy, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa and Global Payments. The validator set operates under a permissioned proof-of-authority model.
Arc uses USDC, Circle’s dollar-pegged stablecoin with more than $74 billion in circulation, as its native gas token. Denominating fees in a stable dollar asset rather than a volatile cryptocurrency is intended to give enterprises predictable costs for high-volume settlement workloads.
The network is organized into three environments called Sectors. The Privacy Sector supports opt-in confidential transactions. The Payment Sector is built to handle more than 100,000 transactions per second. The Agent Sector provides verifiable identity and auditable records for autonomous AI agents conducting economic activity. The network delivers sub-500-millisecond finality, according to the company.
Circle said a private mainnet had been running since May 2026, with more than 100 builder partners across payments, capital markets and digital assets by late July. Wednesday’s launch opened the network to full public operation.
The company outlined a roadmap covering a transition to proof-of-stake consensus, enhanced privacy features and broader scalability improvements. As part of that work, Circle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens in the United States this week. The company said the mint does not represent a commitment to a public token offering.
Circle said the validator lineup, which brings together card networks, central securities depositories, global banks and asset managers, reflects its view that institutional trust and regulated infrastructure should form the foundation of on-chain finance rather than be added after the fact.
Copy link