Circle’s Arc tops stablecoin growth leaderboard in first week

Circle just did something that most Layer 1 blockchains spend years trying to accomplish. It launched Arc, an EVM-compatible blockchain purpose-built for financial markets, and within its first week the network is already tapping into the $74 billion USDC supply flowing across more than 30 chains. The mainnet went live on September 16, and the opening numbers tell a story of institutional muscle flexing. Circle deployed $649 million in USDC and $7 million in EURC on Arc at launch, backed by an ecosystem of over 100 participants that includes some of the biggest names in traditional finance. What Arc actually is Arc features sub-second transaction finality and target fees of about $0.01 per transaction. USDC serves as the native gas and settlement asset, which means every transaction on the network runs through Circle’s stablecoin rather than a volatile native token. The launch roster includes BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, and DTCC. On the DeFi side, Arc integrated with Aave, Morpho, and Uniswap from day one. The ARC token and its $3B valuation Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens during the genesis event, splitting them across three buckets. The ecosystem development fund received 60...