Circle launches Arc mainnet with BlackRock and Visa among validators; Morpho live as credit infrastructure; 10B ARC tokens minted

Circle's Arc mainnet went live on September 16, 2026, with gas and settlement denominated in USDC, and The Block reports BlackRock and Visa are among the network's validators. Morpho is now live on Arc as its credit infrastructure. Contrary to the whitepaper's earlier plan to leave ARC unreleased, 10 billion ARC tokens have been minted. A memecoin launchpad launched alongside the mainnet, using USDC bonding curves with liquidity migrating to a Uniswap V3 pool after graduation. First-day activity was heavy: about 9.1M transactions at an average fee of 0.02 USDC and $79.8M in DEX trading volume, with $ARGUS ($24.3M) and $TOLLY ($10.2M) the most traded launchpad tokens; $ARGUS rose from $2.3M to $33M, $TOLLY from $1.3M to $24M and $WARP from $400k to $1M, with $LIFT trading at an $8.3M market cap. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called Arc "more consequential" than USDC.

Detected & updated continuously · Source: Nebula