After unveiling its Arc blockchain in August, Circle has just opened the testnet to the public for this new layer 1 dedicated to stablecoins. Who is involved in this project?
Circle opens public testnet for its Arc layer 1
On Tuesday, Circle opened the public testnet for its Arc blockchain, announcing the participation of well-known names in traditional finance, such as BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs.
Unveiled last August, this layer 1 network will give pride of place to the USDC stablecoin and should enable Circle to capture a share of institutional activity, which is increasingly interested in tokenization:
We believe we are at a turning point where scalable, globally distributed blockchain networks are becoming mainstream, contributing to a massive migration of economic activity to the Internet. In this context, we view Arc as the economic operating system of the Internet, enabling a platform transformation as profound as the launch of the Internet itself and the subsequent revolutions in social media, mobile, cloud, and AI.
In addition, Arc presents itself as “a foundation for fiat stablecoin issuers, as well as tokenized stocks, debt securities, money market funds, etc.” As a result, the testnet is opening up to various stablecoins backed by currencies from other countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines through the following assets:
- Forte AUD’s AUDF;
- Avenia’s BRLA;
- JPYC Inc.’s JPYC;
- BDACS’s KRW1;
- Juno’s MXNB;
- Coins.PH’s PHPC;
- and Stablecorp’s QCAD.
In terms of the various infrastructures and applications, we find the usual names already present on many other networks, such as Curve, Aerodrome, Euler Finance, Aave, Morpho, and Uniswap. It therefore remains to be seen how the network will develop in the future, in an already highly competitive field where everyone offers the same services without any real differentiating factors. For the time being, only USDC is used to pay gas fees, but in the future, other stablecoins may also be supported.
To date, there has been no mention of any governance token, which could be distributed via an airdrop. However, while such a token seems unlikely, Circle explains that Arc will evolve into a “distributed, community-driven system.” Thus, governance could be distributed among various financial institutions, technology platforms, protocol developers, or other infrastructure providers:
This progression will include expanding validator participation, establishing transparent and verifiable governance frameworks, and involving the community in the evolution of the network. Arc’s goal is to become the de facto neutral and shared layer of the Internet’s economic infrastructure: open, cryptographically accountable, and collectively managed.
At the same time, USDC is currently capitalized at $76.19 billion, representing 24.45% of the stablecoin market capitalization.
