Arc 101

In this replay clip, Jeremy Allaire and Nikhil Chandhok describe how dramatically the landscape has changed for fintech developers. Historically, developers were constrained by banking rails, licensing, and deeply regional financial systems. With stablecoins, those constraints disappear. A builder can now reach more than five billion potential users around the world. They emphasize that we are entering a new era of individual empowerment. People everywhere can pursue ideas, build products, and tap into global economic networks using tools that did not exist even a few years ago. What was impossible five years ago became possible two years ago, and is quickly becoming the norm today. The speakers highlight that this wave of opportunity will produce meaningful economic enablement—new businesses, new markets, and new flows of value operating on open financial infrastructure. Arc is positioned as the substrate on which much of this innovation will run. With predictable stablecoin-based fees, global accessibility, and an architecture built for real economic activity, Arc provides the foundation developers need to create applications that reach more people and unlock new economic potential. --- Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws. Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.

In this replay clip, Jeremy Allaire and Nikhil Chandhok describe why Arc must operate as a true economic operating system for the internet. They note that Arc cannot be limited to a single asset such as USDC. Instead, Arc is designed to enable gas payments in multiple stablecoins based on user demand. Their guiding principle is simple: go where the users are. If users prefer to pay gas with a specific stablecoin, Arc aims to collaborate directly with that stablecoin issuer to make this possible. This flexibility supports a seamless user experience and expands Arc’s relevance across global markets. The two also emphasize that Arc should not be perceived as “Circle’s chain” or a U.S.-centric platform. For Arc to function as global financial infrastructure, it must include validators and participants from around the world—major financial companies, infrastructure providers, and technology firms. By embracing multi-stablecoin support, neutral governance, and a diverse validator set, Arc strengthens its role as an open, enterprise-grade Economic OS capable of supporting worldwide economic activity. --- *Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws.* *Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.* *The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.*

In this replay segment, Jeremy Allaire and Nikhil Chandhok explore how Arc is being built as the Economic OS for the internet and what that means for real-world adoption. They underscore that to truly operate as an Economic OS, Arc has to do things differently from traditional blockchains. That difference is resonating with leading global institutions, who are increasingly looking to collaborate and build on Arc. These institutions, in turn, are expected to be a major driver in bringing billions of users onchain. The conversation centers on the real economy, where businesses and individuals think in familiar terms like dollars, euros, pesos, and other local currencies. For Arc to succeed at internet scale, the experience has to feel simple and intuitive: people should not need to think about complex token mechanics or multiple gas assets to access financial products. Jeremy and Nikhil highlight that two parties engaging in a private transaction is core to how society functions today. Arc is designed to preserve that core behavior while making it available at internet scale, with significant throughput and low friction. Using USDC and other stablecoins as gas on Arc allows users to access financial products around the world in a currency they already understand, while benefiting from the speed, efficiency, and programmability of onchain infrastructure. By combining private, high-throughput transactions with stablecoins as gas, Arc aims to bridge the gap between traditional financial expectations and next-generation onchain finance, making it easier for both institutions and everyday users to participate. --- *Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws.* *Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.* *The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.*

Trustless USDC Agents on Arc This replay features NovaNet cofounders Humane Shadab and Wyatt joining the Arc ecosystem team for the first-ever public livestream on the Arc handle. They introduce NovaNet’s focus on zero-knowledge proofs for machine learning—specifically ZKML that can prove correct model execution for AI agents handling money, compliance, and safety-critical actions. The conversation starts with why NovaNet chose to build on Arc: deterministic sub-second finality, low and predictable gas fees paid in stablecoins, and a developer-friendly UX where gas and value are denominated in the same token. With Arc integrated into Circle’s broader platform—wallets, compliance tooling, FX, and cross-chain infrastructure—NovaNet is able to mix and match components to support trustless agent workflows. From there, the workshop introduces the core idea of “trustless USDC agents.” In most setups, AI agents are black boxes: users and institutions have to trust that the model runs correctly and that agents are spending funds, staying compliant, and following policy as intended. NovaNet’s ZKML changes this trust model by attaching cryptographic proofs to agent decisions so that model execution can be verified without relying solely on reputation, manual oversight, or institutional intermediaries. The first demo shows a USDC spending agent on Arc. A user asks an agent to make a payment, and Circle’s Oak agentic framework orchestrates the workflow. An AI spending model evaluates whether a transaction should be approved according to a spending policy. NovaNet’s ZKML prover then generates a proof that the model ran correctly. That proof is paid for via Circle’s x402 micropayments protocol and bundled with relevant transaction data and signatures. Finally, the transaction is executed on Arc, and proof data is stored on-chain as an attestation, providing an auditable trail of how and why funds were spent. The second demo introduces “Arc agents” that own Circle wallets and operate on Arc with an on-chain audit trail. Here, the focus is on compliance. Two agents transact with each other, pulling compliance data from Circle’s compliance engine. The AI compliance model uses that data and other inputs to determine whether both sides pass a defined compliance policy. NovaNet proves that the model evaluated the compliance data correctly via ZKML before the payment is executed in USDC on Arc. Each transaction leaves an on-chain record linking the transfer, the proof hash, and the agent’s behavior, creating a verifiable layer that can support institutional governance and regulatory expectations. In the third demo, the team explores robot-to-robot payments, inspired by Circle’s partnership with OpenMind. The scenario shows how two robots operating on different blockchains can pay each other for services using USDC, with Arc playing the role of a high-speed, low-cost settlement layer. Robots detect events such as collisions using sensors and vision models. Those events trigger x402-based micropayments, and Circle Gateway is used to bridge value across chains. NovaNet’s ZKML runs on-device (or “on-robot”), proving that the underlying models and sensor-triggered logic executed correctly before payments are authorized. Wyatt then dives into the technical details of NovaNet’s ZKML stack, called Jolt Atlas. Instead of focusing on massive LLMs that are difficult and slow to prove, NovaNet targets more practical, smaller classification models and builds up from there. They start from the Jolt proving system and replace a RISC-V-centric design with ONNX, a widely used machine learning format. This allows developers to take models from ecosystems like Hugging Face, export them to ONNX, and plug them directly into NovaNet’s ZKML pipeline. The proving system leans heavily on a Sumcheck protocol and lookup tables. Rather than simulating every operation through large, complex circuits, many nonlinear and linear operations are handled via efficient lookups, dramatically reducing proving time. This architecture supports common ML operations such as ReLU and softmax and yields fast, memory-efficient proofs that are suitable for on-device and edge environments. Benchmarking indicates significant speed improvements (often 4–8x faster) over prior open-source approaches. The session also highlights “folding schemes” as a powerful pattern for Arc. Folding lets many individual proofs—such as daily compliance checks or large batches of in-game or agentic transactions—be aggregated into a single succinct proof that can be posted and verified on-chain. This means, for example, that an institution could cryptographically prove that its agents were compliant every day for a month on Arc, while paying roughly the same verification cost as a single proof. Throughout the replay, the speakers tie this technical foundation back to real-world use cases: regulated financial institutions using agents for trading and settlement while maintaining strong auditability; consumers and merchants engaging with agents that can be proven to follow spending and safety policies; and future agentic commerce scenarios where robots, devices, and AI services transact with each other using USDC across chains. The livestream closes with pointers to NovaNet’s resources, including novanet.xyz for project information and technical documentation, and blog.icme.io for deep-dive posts on ZKML, on-device proofs, and folding schemes. The Arc team also invites developers to join the community Discord, share ideas for future streams, and explore how to build verifiable, trustless USDC agents on Arc as the network marches toward mainnet. --- *Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws.* *Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.* *The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.* *USDC is issued by regulated affiliates of Circle. A list of Circle’s regulatory authorizations can be found here.*

We’re excited to welcome Blockradar, a Day One Architect on the Arc Public Testnet, for a conversation on how stablecoin-native infrastructure is redefining financial services in emerging markets. Blockradar is a non-custodial Wallet-as-a-Service platform that simplifies how businesses build with stablecoins. Through its versatile wallet APIs, developers can manage collections, payouts, and treasury automation — all while unifying customer USDC balances across chains via Blockradar’s Gateway integration. On Arc, Blockradar’s customers gain a frictionless experience with: Stablecoin-native gas for predictable transaction fees Instant finality for seamless UX Programmable payments that power treasury automation Together, these innovations make it easier for fintechs to move from prototypes to production-ready stablecoin services — embedding USDC into real-world financial experiences. Join us for a live discussion with Morgan Williams, Co-Founder of Blockradar, and Corey Cooper, Sr. Manager for Circle's DevRel, as we explore how developers are building the next wave of stablecoin infrastructure on Arc. Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws. Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.

Guided by Circle’s vision of making money truly open and programmable, Arc is public internet infrastructure that invites everyone to build, coordinate, and transact onchain.

This livestream focuses on why Arc was designed as a high-performance L1 specifically for financial applications. Adi explains how years of consensus research led to Malachite, a modern Rust implementation of the widely used Tendermint BFT protocol, chosen for its deterministic finality and battle-tested reliability. Paired with a Rust-based Ethereum execution client, Arc gives builders familiar EVM tooling on top of a consensus layer that finalizes blocks in roughly 500ms. Corey and Adi walk through the benefits of decoupling consensus and execution into separate processes: operators can scale each independently, tuning bandwidth and storage where they’re most needed as throughput grows. For developers building with assets like USDC and EURC, this architecture means that once a transaction is confirmed, it is finalized—reducing the risk of reorgs and making large-value transfers safer and more predictable. The session also touches on Arc’s roadmap for performance and safety. Topics include MultiProposer extensions to increase throughput, how the team is approaching MEV with a focus on protecting users from toxic patterns like sandwiching, and how Arc aims to keep evolving post-mainnet. Attendees will come away with a clear mental model of how Arc’s consensus and execution layers work together to deliver fast, reliable settlement for money movement at internet scale. --- Arc is offered by Circle Technology Services, LLC (“CTS”). CTS is a software provider and does not provide regulated financial or advisory services. You are solely responsible for services you provide to users, including obtaining any necessary licenses or approvals and otherwise complying with applicable laws. Arc has not been reviewed or approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The product features described in these materials are for informational purposes only and may be modified, delayed, or cancelled without notice at the sole discretion of Circle Technology Services, LLC. Nothing herein constitutes a commitment, warranty, guarantee, or investment advice.

AI Agents on Arc with USDC Kick-off Workshop by Blessing Adesiji! Get ready to build the next generation of payment systems, blending AI Agents with Arc, and help shape the future of intelligent finance. The world of AI-driven payment systems is waiting to be built - with AI Builders at its core.