Countdown to Arc Mainnet: Where Will the First Batch of Traffic Flow?

Meme and DeFi Compete for First-Day Traffic

Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

Robinhood Chain has pushed its daily DEX trading volume to $989 million within just two months of launch, raising market expectations for the next institutional public chain.

On September 16, Circle's open blockchain network Arc will launch on the public mainnet. This Layer 1 chain focuses on stablecoin finance as its primary use case, initially using USDC to pay for gas, with transactions achieving final confirmation in under a second, maintained by a consortium of permissioned validators.

Where will the first batch of traffic flow? Meme projects have already opened for business, competing for token issuance entry points. Everything is ready, just waiting for the right moment.

Circle announced on August 5 that its 11 founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa. Arc is currently in the private mainnet phase, with over 100 institutions and ecosystem teams participating in its development.

BlackRock is expected to deploy its dollar institutional digital liquidity fund BUIDL to Arc, allowing institutional investors to subscribe, redeem, and deploy funds in a native USDC environment. Circle and DTCC plan to advance the tokenization of assets held by the U.S. Depository Trust Company (DTC) starting in the second half of 2027, aiming to enable market participants to settle tokenized assets via third-party applications on Arc using stablecoins. BNY and Standard Chartered are also exploring integrated solutions for digital asset custody, foreign exchange, and repurchase infrastructure.

The Arc public testnet is expected to handle over 150 million transactions in the first 90 days, with approximately 1.5 million wallets initiating transactions. Since the private mainnet launched in May, the network with chain ID 5042 has seen the emergence of community RPCs, explorers, trading platforms, and tokens.

These tokens have already generated quotes and liquidity, but the current network is still defined by Circle as a private mainnet. Public network access will open on September 16, and the mainnet parameters for the official cross-chain tool are yet to be released.

Fomo and edgeX Promise First-Day Access, Aave V4 Awaits Governance Progress

Fomo co-founder Se Yong Park stated on August 30 that Fomo will provide trading support on the first day of Arc's launch. Fomo is an application that combines token discovery, social dynamics, and cross-chain trading within a single account, with the project revealing in April that its mobile registration has reached 500,000. Fomo has not yet disclosed the first batch of tokens, trading paths, and sources of liquidity it will support on Arc.

Fomo currently supports Solana, Robinhood Chain, BNB Chain, Base, Ethereum, and Monad, allowing users to view other accounts' trades, track profits and losses, and purchase tokens across chains. After integrating with Arc, this frontend can directly bring existing users to the Arc asset page, but whether it can complete bridge-less transactions on the first day still depends on the routing and funding entry points that Fomo will subsequently announce.

edgeX announced on September 3 that it will be a partner on Arc's first day, planning to launch a 24-hour trading USD/JPY perpetual contract first and offering over 150 perpetual markets covering U.S. stocks, commodities, and crypto assets, with margin, settlement, and fees all using native USDC. Circle Ventures has invested in edgeX, and both parties have previously advanced the integration of native USDC and CCTP on the EDGE Chain.

Circle expects to integrate DeFi protocols and capital service providers such as Aave, Aerodrome, FalconX, Galaxy, GSR, Keyrock, Morpho, Nonco, Uniswap, and XFX on the first day of the public mainnet, with Rain, Thunes, and Wirex providing stablecoin payment services, and Binance Wallet, Chainlink, Fireblocks, Kraken, Ledger, MetaMask, Uniswap Labs, and Upbit offering wallet, trading, and infrastructure support. Aave Labs submitted a governance proposal in June to deploy Aave V4 on Arc, intending to open USDC, EURC, WETH, and cirBTC markets around the mainnet launch. This deployment still needs to complete the Aave governance process.

According to this list, Uniswap and Aerodrome will provide spot exchanges and liquidity pools, while Aave and Morpho will handle collateral lending. Institutions like FalconX, GSR, Keyrock, and Nonco will be responsible for market making and capital allocation. The first phase of Arc's gas, major trading pairs, and lending assets will revolve around USDC, and whether funds can simultaneously enter the Meme pool, stablecoin pool, and lending market on the first day will directly impact the slippage and borrowing capacity of each market.

Top Memes Begin to Stratify, Tolly, Warp, and Arcpad Compete for Token Issuance Entry

On September 1, the Chinese community account ARC Chinese Research Station released a popular Meme roundup for Arc, with Architects, FatCatBatRatWifHat, COOL, and WARP all making the top five. According to Arcodex data, the market capitalizations of Architects, COOL, and FatCatBatRatWifHat are approximately $2.79 million, $2.31 million, and $1.16 million, respectively, corresponding to liquidity of about $90,800, $105,300, and $60,500, with 24-hour trader counts of 105, 193, and 73.

WARP and BEANCAT have market capitalizations of approximately $890,900 and $864,500, respectively, with liquidity in their pools insufficient at under $46,000.

Additionally, Arc uses USDC to cover both gas and transaction pricing assets, allowing users to create, buy, and sell tokens without needing to prepare another network token in advance. Launchpads generally connect USDC directly to joint curves or liquidity pools, but project teams have proposed different solutions for price formation, LP attribution, and fee distribution.

Tolly has already launched a launchpad and DEX on chain ID 5042, with all token supply entering a permanently locked USDC liquidity pool without going through a joint curve. Each transaction incurs a 1% fee, with 64% of the USDC fees generated from purchases going to creators, 12% to holder rewards, 10% to the protocol, and the remaining portion used for repurchasing and burning TOLLY and corresponding project tokens; all fees from selling project tokens are fully burned.

Warp uses a joint curve, migrating to WarpDex and burning LP once the token market capitalization reaches $69,000. Its cross-chain purchase module plans to burn USDC from Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum through Circle CCTP, automatically completing purchases after minting on Arc. The Arc-side contract has been deployed, but the source chain contract had not gone live as of September 3.

Arcpad offers another solution on the public testnet, with tokens immediately entering Uniswap V3 upon creation, without waiting for graduation or migration. The platform charges a 1% transaction fee, which is split evenly between the protocol and creators by default, with creators also able to allocate part of their income to holders. Arcpad disclosed that its contract has not yet undergone professional auditing. Tolly, Warp, and Arcpad are currently independent projects, and Circle has not endorsed their products or tokens.

RadarDEX is responsible for the current ecosystem's market data and issuance infrastructure, with its data adopted by frontends like Arcodex, and the built-in launchers created and locked liquidity based on Uniswap V3. Sharc has chosen a joint curve and LP destruction after graduation, explicitly stating that it has not issued a platform token. With multiple launchpads appearing simultaneously, tokens with the same name and code may also be redeployed, making contract addresses the only reliable identifier for distinguishing assets.

Interestingly, Circle also plans to launch a suite of supporting products on September 16, including a composable application framework for on-chain workflows, AI-driven applications and smart contract building tools, tokenization management capabilities for real-world assets, and interactive interfaces for developers, users, and AI agents.

After the public mainnet opens on September 16, official cross-chain capital inflows, DEX liquidity, lending deposits, and active addresses will begin to form verifiable mainnet data, with the first-day products promised by Fomo and edgeX also undergoing real trading verification on the same day.

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