Circle's Arc has no gas token, and that decides who earns

Circle switches on the Circle Arc mainnet on Wednesday, and the first retail cohort waiting for it is meme coin traders, BeInCrypto reports. The chain that institutions built has drawn the audience institutions usually design around.

“Arc will launch its mainnet on September 16, 2026. Arc was built by Circle and is a Layer 1 chain that uses USDC for gas fees.”

— Layergg, Post on X about the Arc launch

Layergg, on X

A chain with no gas token

What launches on Wednesday, by crypto.news's description:

• Eleven founding validators run the network: BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo and Visa.
• Consensus runs on Malachite, a Tendermint-derived engine with finality under 500 milliseconds, and execution is EVM-compatible through Reth.
• Gas is paid in USDC, so the chain has no native token to buy, stake or burn.

The chain has no gas token, and that changes who collects. On Tron every USDT transfer pays a fee in TRX and the network burns it, which is why we could price that burn at 0.89% of the token's market value this evening. On Arc the fee is the stablecoin, so there is no supply to shrink and no token trade to take. The value lands with Circle, whose shares trade at $90.60, up 27.1% over the past month.

The meme coin audience arrived by accident. Arc blocked access during testing, traders complained, and sentiment turned when a launch platform said it would support the chain from day one. A testnet token called SLJ appeared to mock the episode, and it exists on a chain whose validators are card networks and clearing houses. None of that appears in Circle's pitch, which is about settlement rails, sub-second finality and optional privacy that a compliance department can live with.

Who this is aimed at

USDT carries $183.4 billion against USDC's $74.2 billion, so Circle's coin is 40% the size of Tether's, and the largest share of USDT sits on Tron. A chain where USDC is the fee currency gives Circle a venue it controls instead of a guest slot on someone else's network. Every transfer that moves from Tron to Arc moves fee income from TRX holders to Circle's accounts.

Eleven regulated names running a permissioned set is a design choice aimed at banks and card networks, and it removes the failure modes that scare compliance officers. It also removes the property meme coin trading depends on elsewhere, where no operator can order a market closed.

The week it lands in

Wednesday also brings the Federal Reserve decision that the whole market is waiting on, and Tuesday brings the Senate vote on market structure. Circle is launching a bank-facing chain into the 48 hours when American policy on digital assets either moves or stalls.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.