Arc, the layer-1 blockchain built by Circle, opened its mainnet on September 16, 2026. Within its first 24 hours, decentralized exchanges on the network handled roughly $410 million in trading volume. About 82% of that came from memecoin launchpads, not from the stablecoin payments Arc was designed around.

Arc Chain hits $410M in DEX volume in its first week as Argus Launchpad gains traction. Here's what is driving the ecosystem's rapid growth.

That split matters for anyone planning a token launch on the chain. Arc arrived with institutional backing and a payments story, but its first week looked a lot like the early days of every other new chain: a flood of new tokens, most of which nobody saw.

Related: Circle Launches Arc Studio AI Agent to Build Full-Stack Onchain Apps From Simple Prompts

What Is Arc?

Arc is an EVM-compatible layer 1, so Solidity contracts and standard Ethereum tooling work without changes. Its most unusual design choice is gas: fees are paid in USDC rather than a volatile native token, which keeps transaction costs stable in dollar terms.

The network launched with Circle and 11 founding validators, including BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard. That lineup signals where Circle wants Arc to go: settlement, payments and tokenized assets. The early on-chain activity went somewhere else.

Introducing Arc Studio.

Arc Studio is an AI-powered workspace for building onchain applications on Arc, from idea to smart contract logic to deployment.

It helps developers move faster without turning the build process into a black box.

→ Generate smart contracts
→ Review… pic.twitter.com/IqiDv5EyjU

— Arc (@arc) September 17, 2026

Where the Day-One Volume Came from

The single largest source was Argus, a memecoin launchpad that went live with the chain. Argus recorded $202.35 million in volume and saw 83,751 tokens created in its first 24 hours, roughly half of Arc’s total DEX volume on day one.

Argus deploys new tokens into Uniswap v4 pools and lets creators set fixed buy and sell taxes through v4 hooks. Every trade in those pools pays the tax on top of the normal swap fee, which changes the economics of trading them.

The Visibility Problem Arrives on Day One

With more than 83,000 tokens created in a day, the chance of any single token being noticed is small. Screeners such as DexScreener and GeckoTerminal rank new pairs largely on activity: volume, number of transactions and unique traders. A token with no trades in its first hour drops off the “new pairs” view and rarely comes back.

This is the same pattern Solana went through with Pump.fun and Base went through with its own launchpads. A new chain plus a low-friction launchpad produces thousands of tokens, and attention concentrates on the few that show activity early.

Related: Circle Takes Arc Multi-Asset as EURC and cirBTC Go Live on CCTP

What’s Different about Launching on Arc

  • Dollar-denominated gas. Because fees are paid in USDC, teams can budget a launch in dollars without guessing at gas-token prices. That makes campaign costs more predictable than on chains with volatile gas.
  • Taxed pools. Argus pools charge a fixed tax on every buy and sell. Any trading activity, whether from real users, market makers or promotional volume, pays that tax, so a 5% tax token is far more expensive to trade actively than a 0% one.
  • Uniswap v4 hooks. Tools built for v2 or v3 pools won’t necessarily work with v4 pools and their hooks. Check that any trading or analytics tool supports v4 before relying on it.
  • Thin early liquidity. New chains start with shallow pools, so a single large order moves the price sharply in either direction.

How Launch Teams Are Responding

Existing multichain tooling moved quickly. Boost Legends, a Telegram-based Solana volume bot (solanavolumebot.com, @boostlegends_bot) that also runs as a BSC volume bot and on Base and Ethereum, released a dedicated Arc bot, boostlegends_arc_bot, within a week of mainnet. The team’s documentation for its Arc volume bot points out the pool-tax issue up front: on Arc, the tax a creator sets is charged on every bot trade as well, so it has to be part of the budget.

Launchpad aggregators, screeners and wallet trackers are adding Arc support at a similar pace, which is typical for a chain with this much early volume.

What to Watch in the Coming Weeks

  • Whether the volume holds. Launch-week numbers on new chains usually fall sharply once the novelty fades. Treat day-one volume as a ceiling, not a baseline.
  • The mix between memecoins and payments. Circle’s pitch is stablecoin settlement. If launchpad activity keeps dominating, Arc will look more like a general-purpose trading chain than a payments network.
  • More launchpads. Argus’s share of volume will likely shrink as competitors launch, as happened on Solana and Base.
  • Tax design. If high-tax tokens keep underperforming low-tax ones on volume, expect creators to settle on lower default taxes.

FAQ

What is Arc?

Arc is an EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain developed by Circle. Gas fees are paid in USDC, and the network launched on September 16, 2026 with Circle and 11 founding validators, including BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard.

What is Argus on Arc?

Argus is a memecoin launchpad on Arc. It accounted for $202.35 million of volume and 83,751 new tokens in the chain’s first 24 hours. Tokens launch into Uniswap v4 pools with fixed buy and sell taxes.

Do I need ETH for gas on Arc?

No. Arc uses USDC for gas, so you need USDC in your wallet to pay transaction fees.

Can volume bots run on Arc?

Yes. Boost Legends runs boostlegends_arc_bot for Arc tokens. Because Argus pools charge a tax on every trade, the tax is part of the cost of any volume campaign.

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