Key Takeaways:
- Arc Launch: Circle announces the launch of Arc, a scalable, secure, and EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain built with an API-based interface to stablecoin payments, FX and capital market applications that is powered by USDC as the native gas token.
- Growth: USDC in circulation ended Q2 2025 at $61.3B, 90% more than in Q2 2024, with over $5.9 trillion of on-chain transactions.
- IPO Momentum: After a successful $1.2B IPO and collaborations with Binance, FIS, OKX and others, Circle is promoting Arc as the foundation of worldwide digital settlement.
Circle is targeting the restructuring of the financial infrastructure of the internet with Arc, a purpose-built blockchain paying special attention to the stablecoin economy. It was announced alongside the company releasing its first earnings report as a publicly traded company as it showed a record setting quarter in USDC adoption and transaction volumes.
Read More: $1.05B IPO: What Circle’s Historic NYSE Listing Means for the Future of Crypto
Arc: A Dedicated Blockchain for Stablecoin Finance
Arc is not another blockchain, it is a financial-grade Layer-1 network focused specifically at stablecoin-powered use cases.
Features of key design are:
- Legacy gas: USDC is used to pay every transaction fee in the flagship stablecoin of Circle.
- Pre-written FX engine: simplified cross-currency stablecoin swaps.
- Finality in sub-seconds: Real-time settlement of enterprise-scale financial processes.
- Deliberate obscurity: Organizing confidential transactions, without undermining compliance.
- EVM compatibility: Enables the builders of Ethereum to deploy applications without reengineering.
Circle explains Arc will be completely interoperable with the larger multichain environment and will go to private testnet in the weeks ahead, and to public testnet this fall.
Read More: $624M Offering, $5.6B Valuation? Circle’s IPO Could Be the Stablecoin Shakeup of the Decade
Q2 2025: USDC Demand Hits Historic High
While the Arc announcement is forward-looking, Circle’s Q2 numbers underscore the current scale of stablecoin adoption:
- USDC circulation: $61.3B (up 90% YoY)
- On-chain transaction volume: $5.9 trillion in Q2 alone
- Revenue and reserve income: $658M, up 53% YoY
- Adjusted EBITDA: $126M, up 52%
CEO Jeremy Allaire called the quarter “a defining moment” for both Circle and the broader stablecoin ecosystem, emphasizing that interest in building on USDC is accelerating across banking, payments, and capital markets.
Strategic Partnerships Expanding Global Reach
The impetus at Circle does not only lie with product launches but also the furthering of integration within an industry. Circle revealed or introduced new partnerships with:
- Binance -Liquidity and global reach of stablecoins.
- FIS and Fiserv -Pooling USDC into payment processing networks.
- OKX and Corpay Deliver Depth Adoption in Crypto Trading and Cross Border Settlements.
In May, the company also launched The Circle Payments Network, which enables banks and financial institutions to use stablecoins to provide instant payments. More than 100 establishments have already been in the pipeline.
Arc’s Role in the Next Internet Financial Layer
Circle envisions Arc as core infrastructure, a 24/7 network of settlement base layer to stablecoin transactions as easy as sending a message on the Internet. Arc strives to cater to the institutional requirement of speed, security and interoperability by utilizing the high-performance consensus engine that Malachite offers.
Under a permissive license, the blockchain will be open-sourced, allowing developers across the globe to build financial products on top of. Such a practice would fast track adoption in both DeFi and traditional finance to the point of obscuring the distinction between the two.
The Arc release combined with the meteoric rise in USDC and institutional partnership of Circle is a clear indication of an aggression to corner the stablecoins layer of the internet economy. Assuming that the path taken by USDC has already been replicated, Arc has a potential to be one of the most significant blockchain platforms over the next few years.
