Circle has officially gone live with the public mainnet for its Arc L1 blockchain. The project’s website now shows Arc as fully operational. The company had previously announced September 16, 2026 as the official launch date.

Who’s validating the network?

Arc’s validator set includes some serious corporate heavyweights: BlackRock, Visa, and Mastercard are all on board.

Purpose and features

Arc is focused on financial markets, payments, tokenized assets, and use cases involving AI agents. The chain is EVM-compatible and uses USDC to pay for gas. Fast transaction finality is one of the network’s key selling points.

Current status

The Arc mainnet is up and running, open to the public. Its infrastructure is built for finance and payments, supporting the issuance and trading of tokenized assets, plus interaction with AI agents.