The chart showing Arc’s recent trading drop is accurate, and it looks bad on its face.
The network’s DEX volume went from $410.82 million on launch day, September 16, to $50.97 million by September 21, and checking the same Dune dashboard myself just now, the 24-hour figure has settled around $47.6 million.
That’s a real decline, and anyone reporting it as bearish isn’t wrong about the number itself.
But that same Dune query tracks more than one metric, and I went digging into what else it’s showing before assuming the volume chart tells the whole story.
$347M in TVL and $6.9M in Fresh Inflows
Start with where the capital actually sits. Checking Arc’s live chain page on DefiLlama, total value locked comes in at $347.44 million, up 1.45% in the last 24 hours, and net inflows over that same 24-hour window came in positive at $6.9 million. That’s the opposite of what you’d expect if capital were fleeing the chain the way the volume chart implies. Stablecoin supply on Arc, the closest thing to a “dry powder” gauge for a chain built around USDC settlement, sits at $628.47 million, with USDC accounting for 99.06% of it.
Morpho’s $192M and Aave’s $127M Say Lending Is Building, Not Bleeding
The protocol breakdown is where the counter-narrative gets more interesting than a single volume chart can show. Lending activity on Arc is quietly building rather than collapsing: Morpho Blue’s TVL on the chain sits at $192.27 million, up 3.48% in a day, and Aave V4 holds $127.38 million, per the same DefiLlama data. Neither of those protocols benefits from memecoin churn the way a launchpad does, TVL parked in a lending market usually reflects someone making a deliberate bet on the chain sticking around, not a trader rotating through a token in minutes. Uniswap, by contrast, has TVL down slightly on Arc, which tracks with the DEX volume pullback, but it’s still sitting on $23.25 million after the launchpad-driven frenzy faded.
Only $14K in App Revenue Is the Number That’s Actually Weak
I won’t pretend the picture is clean. Fee generation is still thin: app fees on Arc totaled $298,470.88 over the last 24 hours, per DefiLlama, translating to just $14,071.82 in actual app revenue. That gap between fees and revenue is the real story analysts should be watching, not the DEX volume line by itself, it says the chain is processing activity but protocols aren’t capturing much value from it yet, which is a maturity problem more than a death spiral.
How Arguspad’s $202M Built the $410M Headline in the First Place
There’s also useful context in how the day-one number came together, something I laid out in my Robinhood Chain comparison last week. The same Dune dashboard shows roughly 82% of that opening figure, or $336.3 million, came from memecoin launchpads that were pre-built and live at block one, with Arguspad alone responsible for around $202.4 million of it. Strip that layer out and Arc’s genuine settlement and DeFi volume on day one was closer to $75 million, which is a lot closer to where the chain is trading now than the headline $410 million ever was. Read that way, the “88% crash” isn’t really Arc collapsing, it’s the launchpad sugar high wearing off while the underlying TVL, stablecoin base, and lending activity keep climbing.
The Bottom Line
None of this means the bearish take is fabricated. Volume did fall off a cliff, and revenue capture is genuinely weak for a chain that launched with BlackRock, Visa, and Mastercard as validators. But a chart that only shows daily DEX volume misses that TVL is growing, inflows are positive, and the lending side of the ecosystem is building in the background. Whether that becomes durable institutional usage or just a slower bleed is the thing worth watching over the next few weeks, not the first chart someone screenshots off Dune.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on X @nulltxnews
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