When it comes to stablecoin chains, Circle finally doesn’t want to be just an issuer
I took a look at Circle’s Arc today, and it doesn’t feel like it’s simply putting out another chain. Arc is already live in a public testnet, with a mainnet beta planned to launch in the summer of 2026. The ecosystem list already includes 308 projects, including 8 payment teams Circle has invested in. Some of these teams already have real transaction data. The pace is quite clear: Circle isn’t content with only issuing $USDC . It wants to pull payments, settlement, and on-chain applications into its underlying network.
The stablecoin track is now highly competitive. The market cap of $USDT is about $18.4 billion, and $USDC is about $7.31 billion. If Circle only competes on issuance volume, it will be hard to overtake Tether in the short term. So a more reasonable strategy would be to turn $USDC into on-chain settlement infrastructure. Whoever controls the settlement path doesn’t just collect issuance fees—they can also benefit from growth at the application layer.
I won’t treat Arc as a typical L1 competitor. Its real benchmark isn’t general-purpose chains like Solana or Base; it’s a stablecoin payment network. If, among those 308 projects, it can produce real merchants, cross-border payments, and institutional settlement, then Arc’s value will be more solid than just TVL.
But the problem is also right here. Stablecoin chains are afraid that the ecosystem looks lively while there aren’t enough real users. Later, I’ll look at three data points: on-chain transaction volume, active addresses, and the $USDC settlement volume. Without these three, even the smoothest story is just a product launch.
#Circle #USDC #稳定币
I took a look at Circle’s Arc today, and it doesn’t feel like it’s simply putting out another chain. Arc is already live in a public testnet, with a mainnet beta planned to launch in the summer of 2026. The ecosystem list already includes 308 projects, including 8 payment teams Circle has invested in. Some of these teams already have real transaction data. The pace is quite clear: Circle isn’t content with only issuing $USDC . It wants to pull payments, settlement, and on-chain applications into its underlying network.
The stablecoin track is now highly competitive. The market cap of $USDT is about $18.4 billion, and $USDC is about $7.31 billion. If Circle only competes on issuance volume, it will be hard to overtake Tether in the short term. So a more reasonable strategy would be to turn $USDC into on-chain settlement infrastructure. Whoever controls the settlement path doesn’t just collect issuance fees—they can also benefit from growth at the application layer.
I won’t treat Arc as a typical L1 competitor. Its real benchmark isn’t general-purpose chains like Solana or Base; it’s a stablecoin payment network. If, among those 308 projects, it can produce real merchants, cross-border payments, and institutional settlement, then Arc’s value will be more solid than just TVL.
But the problem is also right here. Stablecoin chains are afraid that the ecosystem looks lively while there aren’t enough real users. Later, I’ll look at three data points: on-chain transaction volume, active addresses, and the $USDC settlement volume. Without these three, even the smoothest story is just a product launch.
#Circle #USDC #稳定币