How Circle’s institutional Arc blockchain got taken over by memecoins on day one
Circle's new institutional Arc blockchain was quickly dominated by memecoin speculation rather than institutional payments in its first 24 hours. Critics argue that Circle's team misunderstood the ecosystem, leading to a loss of confidence among traders.
Why it matters
The incident illustrates the difficulty of maintaining institutional-grade standards in decentralized networks prone to speculative volatility.
The chain processed 7.83 million transactions in its first 24 hours, but almost none of it was payments. Lifetime USDC transfers stand at about 624,000, according to Arc's Blockscout explorer . Some 400,000 new accounts appeared in a day, and more than 73,000 contracts were deployed. Average fees quadrupled, to three cents.
Memecoins were filling the blocks, leading to some traders writing the chain off.
"Arc is one day old, and every coin is already down like 50-80%," trader wale.moca posted on X. Asked whether it might recover, he replied: "It's cooked." Another user called it a one-day arc.
Memecoins prices on Arc are consistent with the negative sentiment, with TOLLY down 56%, LONG 77%, COOL 75% from launch highs.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in