Circle's Arc blockchain launched on Wednesday with significant institutional backing, including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, and DTCC among its 11 founding validators. The chain processed 7.83 million transactions in its first 24 hours, but the majority of these were not payments. Lifetime USDC transfers stand at about 624,000, according to Arc's Blockscout explorer. Some 400,000 new accounts appeared in a day, and more than 73,000 contracts were deployed. Average fees quadrupled to three cents.
Memecoins dominated the initial activity on Arc, leading to significant price declines. Top tokens including TOLLY, LONG, and COOL are down 56% to 77% from their launch highs. Day-one DEX volume reached roughly $82 million, less than a tenth of the $878 million Robinhood Chain hit during its own memecoin takeover in July. Arc's largest token, ARGUS, is worth $16 million, while its second and third largest are cirBTC and EURC, Circle's own products.
Circle's VP of product for Arc posted an AI-generated image promoting a memecoin on launch day, drawing about 1 million views and accusations that the company was shilling tokens to bootstrap its own network. The post drew a wave of hostile replies, with critics pointing out that Circle's team fundamentally misunderstood meme culture.
Despite the initial focus on memecoins, the chain itself is performing as designed, with half-second blocks being processed with no congestion, and DeFi platforms like Aave and Morpho live. However, the waning sentiment has led to feelings of frustration from the memecoin crowd, despite speculative token activity driving most of the day-one volume.
