Stabledash Live · Sep 21 · 25 min

Circle's Arc Explained: Building the Economic OS for the Internet

With Gagan Mac

Key takeaways

Gagan Mac says ARC launched with 100 plus partners covering payment, earning, lending, borrowing and trading use cases.
ARC settles transactions in under a second and requires USDC instead of a fluctuating native token, according to Mac.
Circle minted the ARCTOKEN governance token, and Mac expects a move to proof of stake sometime next year.

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Summary

Gagan Mac describes ARC as an economic OS for the internet, built for regulated businesses that want dollar accounting, fast finality and known validators.

ARC, the blockchain built by Circle, launched with 100 plus partners serving payment, lending, trading and other use cases, says Gagan Mac, who leads the project. Speaking on Stabledash Live, Mac said Circle has discussed what is now ARC for almost four of his four and a half years at the company.

An economic OS

Gagan Mac calls ARC an economic OS for the internet, judged by "the variety of builders, the comprehensiveness of the use cases it can address, and the clean abstractions" it offers developers. Host Drew Rogers framed the approach as pragmatic for regulated systems: "Somebody has to be regulated. And if something goes wrong, somebody has to be held accountable."

At launch the network included BlackRock, SBI and DTCC alongside Aave, Morpho and eToro, which Mac described as "the best of Wall Street and the finest of Internet culture" in the same room.

“At launch, we had BlackRock, SBI, DTCC, Ave, Morpho, eToro... the best of Wall Street and the finest of Internet culture, Internet companies in the same room. Right? That is what you want.”

Dollars and speed

Mac says users do not need to hold a native token to transact on ARC; they use USDC, which he calls "dollar based accounting that every company is familiar with." Because ARC is a layer one, he says, transactions settle in under a second.

Who is on it

Beyond the listed partners, Gagan Mac says about 17 to 20 unlisted companies are already making payments on ARC. The network carries about 10 to 14 stablecoins, including USDC and partner stablecoins. Morpho and Aave are the supported lending protocols, eToro is present as a social trading app, and ARC can be reached through Phantom, MetaMask and Rainbow wallets.

Token, agents and tools

Circle is the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new blockchain, with the ARCTOKEN tied to a proof of stake timeframe that Mac says arrives sometime next year. He also described planned agent wallets with spending limits and policies, plus a chat interface, shown as a sneak peek and not yet live, where a user could say they want to spend $10 on a prediction.

Arc Studio, a coding agent that builds smart contracts from ideas with security scanning built in, is available to try today, Mac says.

For the next six to eight months, Gagan Mac says the focus is bringing more partners live for pay, borrow, lend and trade, onboarding more validators and taking ARC toward a full proof of stake launch with a publicly available token.

Circle, Morpho, BlackRock, and eToro come up most.

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