Arc opened with a long partner list, but trading has dropped off since launch day. Circle’s launch materials and live DefiLlama data show both things at once.
Circle announced the public mainnet on September 16 with more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders, including banks, asset managers, exchanges, custodians, wallets and DeFi protocols. The founding validator cohort includes BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa and ICE.
Arc’s mainnet blog post lists Binance, Kraken, OKX and Upbit among the exchanges already live, with Coinbase “soon,” plus wallets such as MetaMask and Phantom.
That said, neither Circle nor Arc publishes a trader or active-user count. The closest figures come from the developer side: more than 75,000 Arc House members and more than 1,200 projects built.
Trading Volume Has Fallen
DefiLlama shows $41.4 million in DEX volume over the last 24 hours. Seven-day volume is $316.37 million, down 30.4% week over week, and perps volume is only about $1.98 million over the same period.
Part of the drop likely reflects the launch itself. Memecoin-linked launchpads were live from the first block, so launch-week volume was probably inflated. The Argus World launchpad’s TVL, for instance, is down 23% over seven days.
Stablecoins Are Still Coming In
Total TVL is $551.32 million, essentially flat over 24 hours. Stablecoin market cap, however, is $513.39 million, up 8.95% over seven days, and 98.39% of it is USDC. Net inflows over 24 hours were $24.64 million.
Lending holds most of that capital. Morpho Blue has $315.99 million and Aave V4 has $182.63 million, together about 90% of chain TVL, while Uniswap holds $37.78 million. Circle’s launch release said Aave and Morpho “anchor” the credit markets, and the TVL split bears that out.
Accordingly, the stablecoin base can keep growing while DEX volume falls. Deposits sitting in lending markets simply don’t turn over the way memecoin trading does.
Fees Are Not Becoming Revenue
Arc’s gas is paid in USDC at low, predictable rates. DefiLlama shows $159,783 in fees paid over 24 hours. App fees were $109,578, yet app revenue was only $8,712, so protocols keep roughly 8 cents of every fee dollar their apps generate. Morpho Blue shows $7,429 in fees and $0 in revenue.
Most of the revenue appears to come from launchpads and DEX activity, which is the layer that has cooled. Lending, on the other hand, brings in TVL but little revenue. So the volume drop and the revenue gap are really the same problem.
What The Roadmap Says
Circle’s roadmap lists a payment sector targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second, opt-in privacy, and a possible move to proof of stake in 2027. It also says the ARC token genesis mint is not a commitment to a public launch. Circle’s own disclaimers add that features may be modified, delayed or cancelled.
What To Watch
Three metrics will show whether the partner list turns into recurring activity:
- Stablecoin velocity: does supply start moving through payments and FX, or keep sitting in vaults?
- Revenue capture: does the gap between fees and revenue narrow?
- Volume: does DEX volume find a floor, or keep falling?
If volume levels off while stablecoins and lending keep growing, the launch-week spike was likely a one-off. If stablecoins start leaving too, however, the network was shallower than the partner list suggested.
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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