Circle on Wednesday revealed the first wave of institutional partners set to operate Arc, a new blockchain network the company has built to serve as infrastructure for digital payments and financial applications, with a public launch scheduled for September 16.
The initial operator group includes BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, Intercontinental Exchange — parent company of the New York Stock Exchange — the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, Galaxy, Global Payments, Moneygram, SBI, Standard Chartered, and Sumitomo Corporation.
The operators will function as blockchain validators, verifying transactions, securing the network, and adding new blocks to the chain.
"ARC is being built as a distributed network that is operated initially by roughly 10 to 12 major players, but that will expand over time," Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC in an exclusive interview. "The number of operators that will support running this network … could grow to as many as 20 or 40 over time."
Allaire added that each participant would eventually become part of a staking infrastructure, allowing ARC token holders to stake holdings and vote on how the network evolves — a distributed governance model in which decision-making authority is shared among participants rather than held by a single central organization.
Circle, best known as the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, designed Arc to function as what the company describes as the operating system for the agentic economy — a platform on which businesses build and run digital payment and financial applications using stablecoins and other blockchain-based services. The network is currently in a limited-access launch phase with 100 select partners.
Alongside the operator announcement, Circle disclosed a set of integrations spanning several of the named institutions. BlackRock will bring its tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, onto Arc, using the network's native USDC support to allow institutional investors to buy, redeem, and use fund assets directly on the blockchain — removing layers of complexity that have slowed adoption of tokenized investment products.
Circle is also working with the DTCC, which clears and settles the majority of U.S. stock and bond transactions, to bring tokenized versions of traditionally held assets onto Arc beginning in the second half of 2027. That effort, if completed, would allow financial institutions to settle transactions with stablecoins while keeping underlying assets connected to existing financial infrastructure.
Additional integrations involving BNY and Standard Chartered span digital asset custody, stablecoin access, and foreign exchange and repo infrastructure, the company said.
On the token economics side, Circle holds a 25% stake in Arc's initial supply of 10 billion tokens, entitling the company to participate in validator operations, generate fee revenue, and earn staking income. A 60% allocation is reserved for those who build on, use, and contribute to the network, with the remaining 15% set aside in a long-term reserve.
The involvement of firms such as BlackRock and the DTCC reflects a broader shift in traditional finance toward blockchain-based settlement and tokenized asset infrastructure — though the practical test for Arc remains ahead.
"When an operating system launches, what you want to look at is: are there applications being developed? What's the engagement with those applications? What are the active user bases? What kind of transaction volume and velocity is happening on that network?" Allaire said.
The next 12 months will determine whether Arc generates measurable on-chain activity or joins a longer list of blockchain ecosystems better known for their partner rosters than their usage figures. Circle is also set to report quarterly earnings on Wednesday.
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