What's actually live on Arc mainnet

As of 2 September 2026, nothing is live on Arc mainnet — the network has not launched. Arc's public testnet has been running since 28 October 2025, and Circle has set 16 September 2026 as the mainnet launch date. This page is a status log, not a forecast: it records what is confirmed today and is structured to be updated the moment that changes.

This guide exists because "Arc is live" and "Arc has a launch date" get conflated constantly in ecosystem coverage, and the distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to build, deploy funds, or route payments through the chain. Below is a section-by-section accounting of the network itself, its validator set, and the ecosystem around it, each held to the same four-value status system used across this directory.

The chain itself

Status: Testnet.

Arc's public testnet launched 28 October 2025, running on chain ID 5042002 with RPC at rpc.testnet.arc.io and a block explorer at testnet.arcscan.app; a faucet is available at faucet.circle.com. Circle has stated Arc mainnet will open 16 September 2026, with a reserved mainnet chain ID of 1243 (hex 0x4db) per ChainList — but as of 2 September 2026, no official mainnet RPC endpoint or mainnet block explorer URL has been published. Do not trust a "mainnet RPC" URL you find outside an official Circle source; none has been confirmed as of this writing. Gas on Arc is denominated in USDC at 18 decimals with an EIP-1559-style base fee, and the chain is EVM-compatible, meaning standard tooling — Solidity, MetaMask, ethers.js — is expected to work without modification once mainnet opens. Consensus runs on Malachite, a Tendermint-based BFT engine Circle says targets sub-second (roughly 780ms) finality across an initial validator set of around 100 nodes with a 1MB block size cap.

The validator set

Status: Announced, activating at mainnet.

Circle named eleven founding validators in an 5 August 2026 press release: BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa. Circle itself also operates the network. This is a permissioned validator set — named institutions run consensus, not an open or permissionless set anyone can join. None of these validators is confirmed as actively validating a live network yet, because there is no live mainnet for them to validate; their validator mark takes effect at launch, while each institution's own primary role (mostly Integrates, per the canonical role map) is separate and unaffected by mainnet timing. The full detail, including what "permissioned" does and doesn't imply, is in Arc's founding validators, explained.

Named integration partners

Status: Announced, spanning testnet participation to no public deployment.

The same 5 August release named a long list of integration partners across categories: BNY (exploring integrations) and DTCC on tokenization; DeFi and capital-markets protocols including Aave, Aerodrome, FalconX, Galaxy, GSR, Keyrock, Morpho, Nonco, Uniswap Labs, and XFX; stablecoin payments routing partners Rain, Thunes, and Wirex; and exchange and wallet-custody partners Binance Wallet, Chainlink, Fireblocks, Kraken, Ledger, MetaMask, and Upbit. Several of these — Aave, Aerodrome, Morpho, and Uniswap in particular — are yield and DEX protocols; Built on Arc does not track their earn-angle status, and readers looking for that should go to ArcYield. Naming in a press release is not the same as a live integration; the full named list, grouped by function, is in Arc mainnet launch partners: the full list.

Separately, individual fintechs have confirmed narrower testnet participation ahead of the same release — PhotonPay (a Hong Kong payments processor) said in November 2025 it had joined Arc's testnet, and Brazil's BTG Pactual was named among banks and asset managers that joined Arc's public testnet at its October 2025 launch. Both remain Testnet as of 2 September 2026.

Web3-native applications

Status: Overwhelmingly announced or testnet; no confirmed mainnet deployments.

Launchpad and DEX projects positioning themselves for Arc — TowerExchange, Radar DEX, AstraPump, Lunex, Hinkal, ARCLaunch, uarc.me, and ArcSwap among them — are, as a group, pre-mainnet. Lunex, a Curve-style stablecoin AMM, has reported testnet TVL around $1.29 million and cumulative volume near $2.59 million, both testnet figures rather than mainnet activity. Hinkal, a privacy and confidential-settlement protocol, announced testnet deployment in March 2026. Several names in this category — ARCLaunch in particular — carry a heavy volume of syndicated press coverage relative to any verifiable shipped product; treat marketing volume and shipped status as two different things. None of this class has a confirmed mainnet presence as of 2 September 2026.

The Circle Developer Grants cohort

Status: Real, pre-Arc production businesses; Arc integration mostly announced or in progress.

The startups funded through Circle's Developer Grants program — Blockradar, Hurupay (now Kolan), Myaza, Arrel Technology, Payrit, ViFi Labs, SFx Money, and Flezpay — are, unlike most Class A projects, operating real payment businesses today, largely off the chain entirely or on Arc's testnet. Their Arc-specific mainnet status is not yet meaningfully distinct from the network's own: none of them can be live on Arc mainnet before Arc mainnet exists. Full detail on this cohort is in Circle's Arc grant recipients, confirmed.

Third-party tooling already live for testnet

Independent of Circle's own materials, at least two RPC providers have published working documentation for Arc's testnet as of 2 September 2026: QuickNode, at quicknode.com/docs/arc, and GetBlock, at docs.getblock.io/api-reference/arc. Both cover the testnet endpoint and standard JSON-RPC methods rather than a mainnet endpoint, since none exists yet to document. Their existence is a reasonable signal that testnet tooling has matured enough for third parties to build against it, but it says nothing about mainnet readiness — a documented testnet RPC integration and a documented mainnet one are separate pieces of work, and no vendor has published the latter yet. Builders evaluating RPC options for Arc should verify directly with each provider which network — testnet or, once it exists, mainnet — their published docs actually cover, rather than assuming testnet-documented support extends automatically.

What changes on 16 September, and how this page updates

At mainnet launch, the sections above are structured to flip in place rather than be rewritten: the chain-itself section moves from "Testnet" to "Live on Arc" once we can confirm an official mainnet RPC and a real transaction; the validator section updates once validators are confirmed actively signing blocks; and each named partner or project moves individually as we confirm its own mainnet deployment — a press release naming a partner is not sufficient on its own. Expect this page to look substantially different by late September 2026, and expect some announced partnerships not to materialize at all; that is normal for a pre-launch ecosystem and this page will say so plainly when it happens.

Sources: - Circle Announces Founding Validator Cohort and Major Integrations for Arc - Circle Launches Arc Public Testnet - PhotonPay Is the Latest to Join Circle's New Arc Blockchain - Circle lança blockchain de stablecoins com participação de banco brasileiro