Circle Releases Arc Chain: CEO Says Its Influence Surpasses USDC

According to Woofun AI, Circle officially launched the Arc blockchain platform. CEO Jeremy Allair bluntly stated that its strategic value exceeds USDC and aims to create a general economic operating system.

Currently, competition on the stablecoin circuit is heating up. 21 institutions including Bank of America (BAC.US), Citibank (C.US), and Goldman Sachs (GS.US) plan to issue US dollar stablecoins in the first half of 2027. The European Qivalis Alliance is also developing Euro tokens, and payment giant Stripe is speeding up the layout through Open USD and the Tempo chain co-built with Paradigm.

In this context, Arc attracted BlackRock (BLK.US), DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE.US), Mastercard (MA.US), Standard Chartered Bank, Visa (V.US), etc. as initial validators, and more than 100 institutions such as New York Mellon (BK.US), HSBC (HSBC.US), and State Street Bank (STT.US) are exploring its features. In the DeFi sector, Uniswap and Aerodrome deploy transactions, Aave and Morpho provide loans, and money market funds such as Circle's USYC and BLK.US (BLK.US)'s BUIDL will soon be introduced. Alair defines Arc as an asset issuance platform that supports the issuance of funds, stocks, commodities and currencies, and integrates the Circle payment network with the StableFX foreign exchange platform to achieve 24/7 cross-currency settlement. In response to the pain points of traditional financial institutions, Arc provides customizable privacy protections that allow auditors and regulators to view data. The transaction fee is paid in USDC, has sub-second confirmation, and uses a licensed verifier. Arel criticized the practice of making it mandatory to hold native tokens, similar to the fact that Netflix (NFLX.US) needs to buy Amazon (AMZN.US) shares to use cloud services, and thinks it's ridiculous.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the Arc ecosystem has brought together top players in traditional finance and cryptography, forming a unique closed loop.

In terms of technical architecture, Arc currently uses a Proof of Authority (POA) mechanism, and Circle plans to transition to Proof of Stake (PoS) in 2027. At that time, ARC tokens will play a key role in network security, governance, and functionality. The initial issuance of 10 billion ARC tokens was completed this week, but they are not yet open to the public, and there are no clear plans for public display. In May of this year, Circle raised $222 million through a token pre-sale, valued at $3 billion. Investors include Apollo Funds (APO.US), Ark Investments, BlackRock (BLK.US), and CoinDesk parent company Bullish. Previously, Circle built an ecosystem by distributing USDC across multiple chains. Alair compared this strategy to Google (GOOGL.US) operating its own platform while still allowing Gmail and YouTube to provide services on competitor systems, stressing that its digital assets and applications need to be widely used on mainstream platforms around the world. Arc is viewed as Circle's new growth engine, and Alair calls it “a new business,” predicting that Arc is expected to become the leading or most advanced platform as financial activities are chained up.