What Circle announced
In August 2025 Circle announced Arc, its own Layer 1 blockchain. The published design: EVM-compatible, so Ethereum tooling and contracts work unchanged; USDC as the native gas token, with fees quoted in dollars; BFT consensus with deterministic finality in under a second; optional privacy for transaction details; a built-in foreign-exchange engine for stablecoin pairs; and a target market of payments, FX and capital-markets settlement rather than retail DeFi. A public testnet followed later in 2025. Verify the mainnet status, the validator set and the fee schedule on Circle's own pages before relying on them; this post describes the announced design.
What "USDC as gas" changes
On Ethereum, sending USDC needs a second asset. Your wallet must hold ETH to pay for the transfer, and the cost moves with both ETH's price and network congestion. Every USDC user has at some point been stuck with a balance they cannot move because the wallet has no ETH.
On Arc the fee is paid in USDC itself. Three consequences follow:
- Predictable cost. A fee is a fraction of a dollar and stays that way, which is what a payments company needs to quote a price in advance.
- One asset per wallet. A wallet holding only USDC is fully functional. There is no gas token to buy, run out of, or account for.
- No native volatile asset. There is nothing on the chain to speculate on except what is built on it: the point for the announced audience, a drawback for anyone expecting a token.
For USDC you already hold, none of this changes anything. USDC on Ethereum is the same ERC-20 contract it always was; on Solana, Base and Polygon likewise. Circle did not migrate balances; Arc adds a network rather than replacing one.
CCTP: the transfer layer
Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol is how native USDC moves between chains. USDC is burned on the source chain, Circle's attestation service signs a proof of the burn, and the same amount is minted on the destination chain. No wrapped version is created and no bridge pool holds liquidity that can be drained. The second version, released in 2025, added a faster transfer mode and the ability to attach an action to the arrival. Arc is designed to connect through it, so USDC on Arc would be native USDC, not a bridged copy.
The distinction matters. Bridged tokens such as USDC.e are a bridge's IOU for USDC locked elsewhere; native USDC is Circle's liability directly. Only native USDC is redeemable with Circle, and native USDC is what a swap service delivers when a pair says USDC.
The Tether side: Plasma and Stable
Circle is not alone. Two chains with Tether-adjacent backing were announced in 2025 with USDT in the gas role: Plasma, which launched a mainnet beta in September 2025 with fee-free USDT transfers paid for by the network and a separate XPL token for other operations, and Stable, announced as a chain with USDT as native gas. Both are described here as announced; verify their current state.
| Arc (Circle) | Plasma | Stable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gas token | USDC | USDT transfers subsidised; XPL for other transactions | USDT |
| Issuer relationship | Built by the issuer | Backed by Tether-affiliated investors, not run by Tether | Backed by Tether-affiliated investors, not run by Tether |
| Execution | EVM | EVM | EVM |
| Announced focus | Payments, FX, institutional settlement | Stablecoin payments and DeFi | Stablecoin payments |
| Status | Testnet in 2025; mainnet: verify | Mainnet beta September 2025; verify | Announced 2025; verify |
Why issuer-run chains raise freeze and censorship questions
Circle can already freeze USDC. The contract has a blacklist function on every chain, and Circle has used it, including on addresses sanctioned in connection with Tornado Cash in August 2022. What Circle cannot do on Ethereum is stop your transaction from being included in a block, or stop you from paying gas with ETH to move anything else you hold.
On a chain where the issuer's stablecoin is the only gas asset and the validators are chosen by the issuer, those two limits disappear. A blacklisted address cannot pay for any transaction at all, because its gas balance is the frozen asset. Validators selected by the issuer can decline to include a transaction before any freeze is needed. The announcement described a validator set that starts permissioned and opens up over time; until it is genuinely independent, the chain is an issuer-controlled ledger with EVM compatibility. Optional privacy features run under the same authority, so they hide details from other users, not from the operator.
None of this is hidden or unusual. Stablecoins are permissioned money by construction; an issuer chain makes the permission explicit at the base layer instead of the token layer. For payments between businesses that is a feature. For someone who chose crypto for censorship resistance it is the reason to keep the working balance in an asset the issuer cannot touch and hold USDC only as long as needed.
Which USDC networks you can swap today
Arc USDC is not a pair. Native USDC on these networks is:
- USDC ERC-20 to USDT TRC-20 and the reverse, USDT TRC-20 to USDC ERC-20
- USDC on Base to USDT TRC-20
- USDC ERC-20 to SOL, USDC ERC-20 to BTC and BTC to USDC ERC-20
- USDC ERC-20 to USDC on Polygon
- USDC on Solana to USDT BEP-20
The procedure is the same for each: pick the pair, enter the amount and your destination address, click Swap now, send exactly the shown amount to the deposit address, and watch the status page. ERC-20 deposits lock the rate after 15 Ethereum confirmations, Solana after one. The cost is the network fee for your deposit plus the spread and payout fee built into the quote; the pair page shows the all-in figure.
Mistakes to avoid
- Sending USDC on the wrong network. USDC on Base sent to an Ethereum deposit address is not the same asset at the same address; check the network label in the pair name.
- Treating USDC.e as USDC. Bridged copies are not accepted where native USDC is expected.
- Assuming Arc is live for users. Check the mainnet status and whether your wallet supports the network before sending anything.
USDC (ERC-20) → USDT (TRC-20)