Author: Flora, CryptoPulse

Introduction

The Arc public chain under Circle has officially launched its mainnet. Just about 2 hours after launch, the on-chain USDC reached a scale of 372 million, with approximately 176,000 active addresses. What is even more noteworthy is that prior to the mainnet launch, some users acquired USDC at a premium of 80%—100% in order to enter the Arc ecosystem early and participated in early meme trading.

Looking at the 372 million USDC alone, it seems like just a liquidity migration after the launch of a new public chain. However, if we extend the timeline, we realize that Arc’s true ambition is not to recreate a Solana or Base, but to attempt to transform USDC from a "payment tool on public chains" into a foundational settlement asset for financial infrastructure.

This is also why Arc is worth paying attention to: over the past few years, stablecoins have been seeking their “sovereign status”; meanwhile, Circle is attempting to take it a step further—issuing stablecoins while also controlling a Layer 1 infrastructure centered around stablecoins. When USDC becomes the native gas asset of Arc, Circle is effectively connecting stablecoins, payment networks, public chains, and financial market infrastructure together.

Part One: What Does 372 Million USDC Really Indicate?

The fact that USDC reached 372 million just two hours after Arc's launch is certainly exciting for the market because of the number itself. But if we only understand this as "Arc launched hot," it is actually not enough.

First of all, this 372 million USDC indicates that a large amount of capital has migrated to the new network in a very short time. Arc's official positioning has been as a Layer 1 aimed at the financial market, real-time capital flows, and on-chain economic activities, and before the mainnet launch, over 100 institutions and ecosystem participants had already integrated with it. Its founding validator lineup includes traditional financial institutions such as BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Visa, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, MoneyGram, and Galaxy.

Therefore, Arc's mainnet launch is distinctly different from the typical logic of "new public chain issuing tokens—airdrop—users interacting."

The core issue for traditional public chains is how to retain users; for Arc, the first problem to solve is how to bring in funds.

USDC is precisely the most direct answer.

By using USDC as the native gas asset, it means that users do not need to hold an additional volatile native token when paying transaction fees on-chain. Arc's officials emphasize that their design goals include predictable costs denominated in USD, sub-second finality, and infrastructure aimed at payment, foreign exchange, credit, tokenized assets, and capital market settlements.

This means that from the very beginning, Arc was not answering the question of "how to get more people to trade a Token," but another question:

If a dollar stablecoin becomes the native currency of the Internet, what should the underlying network that carries this dollar liquidity look like?

The significance of the 372 million USDC lies here.

It at least indicates that, with the mainnet just opened, the market is already willing to move a considerable amount of stablecoin liquidity to this new chain. Of course, this does not mean that all 372 million USDC corresponds to real economic activities; there may also be cross-chain migrations, market-making, ecological reserves, and speculative funds involved, so it cannot simply be equated with a real payment demand of 372 million USD.

However, it still releases an important signal: the first batch of liquidity for Arc has emerged, and USDC is becoming the core economic lifeblood of this chain.

Part Two: Why Did USDC Once See an 80%—100% Premium?

If the 372 million USDC is the result, then the 80%—100% premium that appeared before the mainnet launch is another window for understanding Arc's market heat.

According to on-chain monitoring information, before the launch of the Arc mainnet, some users, to enter the ecosystem early, obtained USDC on Arc through third-party channels, and the related USDC had once seen a premium close to 80%—100%. A third-party platform had also processed over 11,600 transactions, involving more than 5 million USD in transactions.

On the surface, this seems very "crypto."

New chain launch, liquidity scarcity, early asset speculation, meme trading, combined with users rushing to enter, resulted in extreme premiums.

But if we break down this phenomenon, we find that it actually reflects a very typical on-chain economic law:

The most valuable thing for a new public chain is never the Token, but rather the early liquidity.

Why are users willing to pay close to a double premium?

Because in the early stage of the new ecosystem, those who can enter first hold information advantage, liquidity disadvantage, and asset disadvantage.

Especially in trading high-volatility assets like memes, what users are buying is not just USDC itself, but the "ticket" to enter this market.

This is also why a strange phenomenon often occurs at the launch of a new public chain: while the prices of native assets on the network may not be stable, stablecoins themselves may see premium due to "scarce on-chain liquidity."

From this perspective, the 80%—100% premium on USDC may not necessarily mean that the value of USDC has changed, but is more likely to indicate that the price of early on-chain liquidity for Arc has changed.

Of course, this phenomenon needs to be approached with calm.

A high premium does not prove that a mature real demand has formed in the Arc ecosystem. On the contrary, if the premium is mainly driven by speculation, memes, and early rushing, then as cross-chain bridges, trading platforms, and wallets gradually improve, and liquidity supply increases, the premium may quickly disappear.

Therefore, what is truly worth observing is not "how much USDC has risen," but rather:

After the arbitrage opportunity disappears, will users still stay?

After the meme craze passes, how much trading will remain on-chain?

When incentives decrease, will USDC still continue to flow in?

These indicators determine whether the 372 million USDC is "starting capital" or "the starting point of real economic activities."

Part Three: What Circle Really Wants to Do Is More Than Just a Public Chain

What is most noteworthy about Arc is not whether it can become another popular Layer 1, but that Circle is attempting to extend its business model to the infrastructure layer.

In the past, Circle's core logic was relatively simple: issue USDC, allow USDC to enter exchanges, wallets, DeFi, and payment networks, and then earn income through reserve assets.

However, as competition in the stablecoin industry intensifies, simply issuing USDC is no longer enough.

If stablecoins ultimately become the base currency for global payments, cross-border settlements, financial transactions, and on-chain assets, then whoever controls stablecoins inherently commands a part of the traffic; and if they further master the underlying networks carrying stablecoins, they can move to even higher positions.

Arc is doing just that.

From the publicly available information, Arc has not confined itself to a simple DeFi public chain position but has included applications in payments, FX, tokenized assets, credit, capital markets, enterprise fund management, and AI agent economies.

Notably, its institutional route is especially noteworthy.

Entities like BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, ICE, Standard Chartered participating in Arc's validators or ecosystem development differ fundamentally from the traditional public chains that rely on a large number of retail users for bootstrapping. What Circle attempts to do is gradually move the existing business processes of traditional financial institutions onto the chain.

For example, cross-border payments can facilitate fund movements via USDC;

Foreign exchange trading can utilize stablecoins for real-time settlements;

Tokenized assets can be directly issued and traded on-chain;

Institutional fund management can automatically execute through smart contracts;

In the future, AI agents needing autonomous payments, transactions, and settlements can also use stablecoins directly.

If these scenarios mature gradually, Arc’s value will no longer depend on "how many people are trading memes on-chain every day," but rather on "how much money flows through this chain completing real economic activities daily."

This reflects two completely different public chain business models.

The former model competes for users and trading volume, with core metrics being TVL, gas fees, active addresses, and DEX trading volumes;

The latter model competes for shares of financial infrastructure, with core metrics shifting to stablecoin circulation, payment scale, institutional trading volume, asset issuance scale, and settlement volume.

This is also why Circle needs to create Arc.

If in the future USDC becomes the on-chain dollar used by more financial institutions, then Circle merely acting as a "currency issuer" may no longer be sufficient. Owning its underlying network means Circle can further participate in trading, settlements, and application layer infrastructure.

In other words, Circle is attempting to shift from being "the issuer of dollars" to "the bearer of dollar liquidity."

And this may be more important than simply expanding the supply of USDC.

Conclusion

With USDC reaching 372 million just two hours after Arc's mainnet launch, it is indeed a noteworthy start; the previous 80%—100% premium on USDC further indicates that the market competition for early on-chain liquidity is already quite intense.

However, for Arc, the real test is just beginning.

Launching the mainnet can generate hype, but cannot automatically create long-term demand. Memes can bring in the first batch of users, but payments, foreign exchange, tokenized assets, and institutional settlements will determine whether Arc can transition from a "popular new chain" to a true financial infrastructure.

If in the coming months, the 372 million USDC is merely a growing number, then what the market may observe is only the successful cold start of a new public chain; if these USDC begin to flow frequently into payments, trading, lending, FX, and institutional settlements, then what Arc might truly change is not the competitive landscape of public chains, but rather the relationship between stablecoins and blockchains.

In the past, stablecoins needed to find public chains.

Now, Circle is attempting to make public chains operate around stablecoins.

This might be the truly noteworthy aspect of the Arc experiment.

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