USDCircle Sets September 16 Launch for Arc Mainnet
Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock Join Institutional Validator Group
TL;DR
- Circle plans to open Arc’s public mainnet on September 16, 2026, with 11 external founding validators.
- Arc’s testnet processed more than 500 million transactions across nearly 3 million wallets before the planned launch.
- Circle’s quarterly revenue missed expectations as lower reserve yields offset rapid growth in USDC activity.
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Circle will launch the public mainnet of Arc, its stablecoin-focused layer-1 blockchain, on September 16, 2026, after naming 11 financial and payments companies as external founding validators. The announcement, released August 5, 2026, came alongside second-quarter results showing rapid USDC transaction growth but slower revenue expansion as falling reserve yields constrained Circle’s largest source of income.
The external validators are BlackRock, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Galaxy, Global Payments, Intercontinental Exchange, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa. Circle will also operate alongside the institutions, placing the company and the named organizations inside Arc’s initial validating group.
Circle said Arc will be secured by institutions that use and build on the network, allowing it to “meet the trust, security, operational, and compliance standards required of critical financial market infrastructure.”
Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s CEO, called the participants “a cohort of network validators no other network can match” during the company’s earnings call.
Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO, MoneyGram, said, “Arc reflects where the industry is heading: trusted, compliant, and unified infrastructure that makes stablecoins practical for real-world payments.”
Arc Targets Stablecoin Settlement and Tokenized Finance
Circle presents Arc as an “economic operating system” for financial markets, with USDC serving as the network’s payment and settlement asset. Users will pay gas fees in USDC rather than a separate volatile native asset.
Arc is designed to support fast settlement, stablecoin-denominated fees, privacy controls, programmable-finance applications and tokenized real-world assets. The public release is expected to include privacy features, an agent stack for programmable finance and infrastructure for issuing, transferring and settling tokenized assets.
Arc was operating as a private mainnet when Circle announced the launch date, with more than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders participating. The network’s public testnet launched in October 2025.
Allaire said the testnet had processed more than 500 million transactions across nearly 3 million wallets. The wallet total represents blockchain addresses rather than a verified count of individual users because one person or organization can control multiple wallets and test environments can generate addresses programmatically.
Aave, Morpho and Uniswap are expected to provide lending, liquidity and decentralized-exchange infrastructure when the public mainnet opens. Binance Wallet, Kraken, Ledger and MetaMask are expected to provide wallet connectivity and user access.
BlackRock plans to deploy its BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL, on Arc using the network’s built-in USDC integration. The deployment is intended to allow institutional investors to subscribe to the fund, redeem positions and use fund assets within one onchain environment.
Circle is also working with DTCC on a planned integration that would enable assets held at The Depository Trust Company to be tokenized on Arc. The initiative is expected to begin during the second half of 2027.
The proposed DTCC structure would allow market participants to use third-party Arc applications for stablecoin-native settlement while referencing securities tokenized from assets held at DTC. Circle said the model would preserve the same investor rights and protections attached to traditionally held securities.
BNY and Standard Chartered are exploring integrations involving custody, stablecoin access, foreign-exchange infrastructure and repo markets.
Arc Presale Lifts Circle’s Revenue Outlook
Circle raised $222 million through an Arc token presale in May 2026. Andreessen Horowitz led the financing with a $75 million contribution, while BlackRock, SBI Group and Standard Chartered Ventures also participated. The transaction assigned Arc a reported $3 billion network valuation.
Circle attributed part of an increase in its full-year other-revenue outlook to recognized revenue from the presale. The company raised its guidance to a range of $310 million to $330 million from an earlier projection of $150 million to $170 million.
The lower and upper ends of the revised range were each $160 million higher than the corresponding ends of the previous forecast. Circle did not divide the increase between presale-related recognition and recurring operating revenue.
USDC Volume Surges as Revenue Misses Estimates
Circle reported $701 million in total revenue and reserve income for the second quarter, a 7% increase from the comparable period. The result missed analysts’ consensus estimate of $717.5 million by approximately $16.5 million, or about 2.3%.
Total revenue and reserve income were slightly higher than the preceding quarter but remained below the $770 million recorded during the fourth quarter of 2025, a difference of $69 million.
Circle generated $668 million in reserve income, which increased 5% from a year earlier and represented approximately 95% of total revenue and reserve income.
The 66-basis-point decline implies an average reserve return of approximately 4.16% during the comparable earlier period. The lower return limited reserve-income growth even as the average amount of USDC in circulation increased.
USDC circulation ended the quarter at $73.3 billion, up 19% year over year. That rate implies approximately $61.6 billion in the comparable period and an increase of roughly $11.7 billion.
USDC onchain transaction volume reached $14.8 trillion during the quarter, an increase of 151%. The growth rate means activity was approximately 2.51 times its earlier level, implying comparable volume of about $5.9 trillion.
The quarterly transaction total equates to roughly $4.9 trillion per month if distributed evenly, although the reported figure measures blockchain transfers rather than Circle revenue or unique economic settlement. Units of USDC can move repeatedly between wallets, exchanges, protocols and applications.
USDC’s share of the fiat-backed stablecoin market declined to 27% despite growth in supply and transaction activity, indicating that the wider market expanded more quickly during the measured period.
Allaire said, “digital asset markets themselves have continued to see significant weakness.”
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Circle Returns to Profit as Expenses Rise
Circle reported $48 million in net income from continuing operations, compared with a $482 million loss during the year-earlier quarter. The result represented a $530 million improvement.
The prior-year period included significant stock-based compensation associated with Circle’s 2025 initial public offering, meaning the year-over-year change was affected by IPO-related expenses rather than only operating growth.
Adjusted EBITDA reached $143 million, an increase of 8%. Adjusted operating expenses rose 23% as Circle invested in product development, infrastructure and artificial intelligence.
Revenue excluding distribution costs reached $289 million, up 15%. The associated margin increased from 38% to 41%, an improvement of 3 percentage points, or 300 basis points.
Circle recorded $410 million in distribution and transaction costs, equal to approximately 61% of reserve income. Allaire said Circle’s USDC distribution agreement with Coinbase had “renewed on its existing terms.”
Revenue from payments, subscriptions and blockchain infrastructure increased 41% to $34 million. Those activities represented approximately 4.9% of total revenue and reserve income, leaving reserve earnings as Circle’s dominant revenue source.
Circle’s shares came under pressure after the results as investors focused on the revenue miss, declining reserve yields and rising expenses despite the return to profitability.
Payments Network Expands Institutional Reach
Circle Payments Network reached $14.7 billion in annualized transaction volume and enrolled 175 financial institutions during the quarter.
The supplied figures described the annualized volume as having increased 76% quarter over quarter, while a separate figure placed sequential network or participation growth at 29%. The two percentages were attached to differently worded measurements and should not be treated as the same metric.
Allaire said annualized transaction volume had risen further to $23 billion by July 31, 2026. That represented an increase of $8.3 billion, or approximately 56.5%, from the quarterly figure.
Both amounts are annualized run rates measured at specific points rather than cumulative transaction totals completed over a full year.
Trust Bank and Patent Portfolio Broaden Circle’s Infrastructure
Circle received final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in July 2026 to establish and operate Circle National Trust, a national trust bank.
Circle also received a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services during the same month. The federal structure authorizes regulated digital-asset custody and may eventually allow Circle to manage USDC reserves directly.
Allaire said the infrastructure bank “becomes a way to project Circle’s infrastructure into global markets for payments, for capital markets, and for use of digital dollars in corporations all around the world.”
Circle also acquired most of IBM’s blockchain patent portfolio, becoming the largest U.S. holder of such patents. Arc was identified as one of the products expected to benefit from the acquired intellectual property.
Allaire summarized the company’s announcements by saying: “Circle Q2: Continued growth and profitability, growing USDC utility, liquidity, and partnerships. OCC National Trust Bank secured. Arc mainnet launches Sept 16, with major firms joining Arc. CPN seeing rapid qtr growth. The internet financial system is arriving.”
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
