Circle has announced that it has rolled out the public testnet for Arc, an open Layer-1 blockchain network aimed at meeting the needs of developers.
Introducing the public testnet comes with broad-based engagement and partnership from over one hundred companies across the financial and economic sectors, expanded infrastructure support, and global participation. Currently, Arc is available for developers and enterprises to deploy, test, and develop on what Circle views as the new Economic Operating System (OS) for the internet.
Advancing the global economy
According to Circle, Arc is set to be a key milestone in building open, programmable financial infrastructure for the global economy. Including predictable dollar-based fees, sub-second transaction finality, opt-in configurable privacy, and direct integration with Circle’s full-stack platform, Arc supports a range of use cases across lending, capital markets, foreign exchange, and global payments.
As detailed by the company, Arc’s public testnet has witnessed substantial early momentum as companies, protocols, and projects start to build and test. As a whole, these companies reach a significant number of users, move, exchange, and custody assets and payments, and support local economies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Considering this geographic diversity, Arc can connect every local market to the global economy, with it coming as an opportunity for companies, regardless of their type, to build on enterprise-grade network infrastructure. This focuses on advancing a shared commitment to creating a more open, inclusive, and efficient global economic system that can be built natively on the internet.
Furthermore, this rollout of Arc’s public testnet represents the beginning of a network developed to advance and become a distributed, community-driven system. Even if Circle is directing the initial development and operation of Arc, the long-term objective is for the network to be operated and governed by a broad set of participants, from across the world, including financial institutions, technology platforms, infrastructure providers, and protocol developers building on Arc who contribute to its growth and integrity.
These plans include scaling validator participation, establishing transparent and verifiable governance frameworks, and allowing community involvement in network evolution. The main objective of Arc is to advance and reach the status of a shared, neutral layer of economic infrastructure for the internet.
