Circle has announced the launch of the public testnet for the Arc blockchain — an open Layer 1 network designed for businesses and developers looking to transition economic activities into an on-chain environment. Over one hundred partners from the financial and technology sectors have already joined the initiative, including global infrastructure leaders and developers from various countries.
This is reported by Business • Media
The Goal of Arc is to Become the Economic OS for the Digital Economy
Arc is positioned as a new economic operating system for the internet — a platform for building the infrastructure of the global digital economy. The network offers stable dollar fees, transaction finalization in less than a second, optional privacy features, and deep integration with Circle’s technology stack. Arc is aimed at use in lending, capital markets, currency operations, and international payments.
“With the public testnet of Arc, we are witnessing impressive early momentum: leading companies, protocols, and projects are beginning to build and test solutions. Collectively, these organizations reach billions of users and conduct transactions worth hundreds of trillions of dollars each year. Arc is designed to connect every local market to the global economy,” said Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire.
Circle currently oversees the development of Arc but plans to eventually transfer governance to a decentralized community of validators and partners — from banks and technology companies to infrastructure developers. The future strategy includes increasing the number of validators, establishing a transparent governance system, and encouraging active community participation in the network’s development. The main goal is to make Arc “a shared and neutral economic layer of the internet — open, cryptographically accountable, and collectively governed.”
Support from Global Financial Giants
Initial participants in the testnet include companies such as BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Invesco, Mastercard, Nuvei, SBI Holdings, Standard Chartered, Société Générale, State Street, and Visa. Representatives from BlackRock highlighted the potential of stablecoin-denominated settlements and on-chain FX to enhance the efficiency of capital markets. HSBC is focused on the opportunity to accelerate and increase the transparency of international payments while maintaining high security standards. Mastercard emphasized the significance of Arc for the development of programmable payment solutions.
Jeremy Allaire stressed that Arc enables every company to operate on enterprise-grade infrastructure, fostering the creation of a more open, inclusive, and efficient global economic system that functions natively on the internet.
To launch Arc, the company acquired the Malachite consensus mechanism from Informal Systems, which will serve as the technological foundation of the network for implementing stablecoin-based financial solutions. Nine employees from Informal Systems have also joined the Circle team.