The DTCC and Mastercard joined other institutional giants to validate the new Layer-1 network from Circle, which employs USDC as its native gas. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens at the start of the Arc mainnet on September 16. The platform hosts more than 100 applications, including Aave V4 and Uniswap, and provides a forex market pairing USDC and EURC for stablecoin borrowing.

Robinhood will support direct USDC deposits and withdrawals on the chain to remove separate transfer steps for users. The ecosystem integrates MetaMask as its default mobile wallet and includes 190+ institutional builders. Zebec's payroll stack and the Pumpfun app provide trading and payment infrastructure live from day one.