Circle has tapped some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, DTCC, Standard Chartered, Galaxy, ICE, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Global Payments, and Sumitomo Corporation, to serve as founding validators for Arc ahead of its September 16 mainnet launch, according to a Wednesday statement.

Arc is Circle’s purpose-built layer 1 blockchain for stablecoin-native payments, settlement, and tokenized financial markets. The network aims to address the limitations of existing blockchains by offering sub-second finality, stable USDC-denominated transaction fees, an integrated foreign exchange engine for multi-currency settlement, and optional privacy features designed to meet institutional and regulatory requirements.

Arc is currently running in private mainnet with more than 100 ecosystem participants building applications for institutional finance.

The stablecoin issuer also announced that BlackRock’s BUIDL fund is expected to deploy on Arc with native USDC integration, while DTCC is working with Circle to enable tokenization of DTC-custodied assets on the network beginning in the second half of 2027.

Additional integrations under evaluation by BNY and Standard Chartered include digital asset custody, stablecoin access, tokenized asset settlement, foreign exchange, and repo infrastructure.

Arc is set to launch with support from leading DeFi protocols, payment providers, exchanges, and wallet providers, including Uniswap, Aave, GSR, FalconX, Binance Wallet, Chainlink, Fireblocks, Kraken, Ledger, MetaMask, Rain, Thunes, and Wirex.

Circle said Arc will debut with developer tools, AI-assisted smart contract capabilities, and infrastructure for issuing and managing tokenized real-world assets.