Circle Releases ARC White Paper: Initial Supply of 10 Billion, 60% Allocated to Ecosystem, Mainnet Expected This Summer

On May 11, Circle officially released the ARC white paper, outlining ARC as the design framework for the native coordinating asset of the Arc blockchain network. Arc is a public Layer 1 blockchain positioned as the ‘Economic Operating System of the Internet,’ providing shared and composable infrastructure to support economic contracts, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and global market operations. ARC is the utility-native asset of the Arc network, aligning participants with the long-term success of the network through staking, governance, fee capture, and platform-level utility functions. ARC does not represent any equity, debt, revenue rights, or asset claims of Circle; its economic value derives entirely from participants’ interactions with the Arc network. ARC fulfills five structural functions: economic alignment (staking and security), platform utility functions (discounts and priority access), fee capture and distribution, governance, and expanding utility functions as the platform grows. Supply and Inflation: The initial supply of ARC is 10 billion tokens. An early adopter declining inflation model is anticipated (initially around 2-3% annually) to reward validators and stakers. The long-term goal is to achieve ‘inflation neutrality’ by completely offsetting new issuance through the destruction of tokens from network activity. Fee Conversion: Regardless of the asset (such as USDC) used by users to pay protocol fees, it will be programmatically converted to ARC at the protocol level, then split into two parts: one part allocated to validators and stakers as compensation, and the other part permanently destroyed to offset inflation. Allocation Plan: 60% allocated to the ecosystem (token sales, developer funding, network growth); 25% allocated to Circle (protocol development, staking, and governance); 15% allocated to long-term reserves (strategic flexibility and economic stability). In terms of governance, after Arc upgrades to a PoS mechanism, economic parameters (fee rates, inflation, destruction logic) will be determined by ARC stakers through governance voting. Initially, Circle will be responsible for protocol upgrades, security incident responses, and validator member management, gradually transitioning governance to token holders as the network matures. The Arc public testnet is set to launch in October 2025, having processed 244.1 million transactions as of May 5, 2026. The mainnet is expected to launch in the summer of 2026.