Circle’s Arc network launches public mainnet on September 16

Circle is finally taking its stablecoin empire vertical. The company behind USDC announced that Arc, its purpose-built Layer-1 blockchain, will launch its public mainnet on September 16, bringing with it a validator set that reads like a who’s who of traditional finance. Fireblocks, BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, and MoneyGram are all listed as founding validators. From testnet to mainnet in under a year Arc has moved at a pace that would make most Layer-1 projects jealous. Circle first announced the network on August 12, 2025, launched its public testnet on October 28, 2025, and is now hitting mainnet roughly eleven months after the initial reveal. During the testnet phase, the network processed over 244 million transactions as reported by May 2026. More than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders have been developing on Arc during that window. The network was designed from scratch for stablecoin-native applications. Arc also ships with privacy tools and what Circle calls an “Agent Stack” for programmable finance — infrastructure that lets autonomous software agents execute financial logic onchain. The money behind the machine Circle raised $...