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The stablecoin firm Circle says it’s officially launched a new testnet designed to serve as an economic operating system for the internet.
Over 100 companies from finance, tech and payments sectors are participating in the layer-1 launch.
Arc aims to offer predictable dollar-based fees, sub-second transaction finality and configurable privacy.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire says it will integrate directly with Circle’s platform to support lending, capital markets, foreign exchange and global payments.
“With Arc’s public testnet, we’re seeing remarkable early momentum as leading companies, protocols, and projects begin to build and test. Combined, these companies reach billions of users, move, exchange, and custody hundreds of trillions in assets and payments, and support local economies across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
This geographic diversity highlights a defining strength of Arc: its purpose-built to connect every local market to the global economy.”
Key participants include capital markets firms Apollo and BNY, financial giants BlackRock and Goldman Sachs and payments titans Visa and Mastercard.
Stablecoin issuers from regions including Australia, Brazil, and Japan are also joining.
The platform will utilize developer tools from Alchemy, Chainlink and Anthropic, with liquidity backing from Coinbase and Uniswap.
