Circle released the ARC whitepaper on May 11, 2026, and simultaneously closed a $222 million private presale of the ARC token at a $3 billion fully-diluted valuation. The presale placed 740 million tokens at $0.30 each — roughly 7.4% of the 10 billion initial supply. It's the first time a publicly listed company has run a token presale, according to CoinDesk and The Block.
The presale lineup
A16z crypto led the round at $75 million. The buyer list reads like a who's-who of traditional finance and crypto-native capital: BlackRock, Apollo Funds, ICE, ARK Invest, Bullish, Haun Ventures, SBI Group, Janus Henderson, Standard Chartered Ventures, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, and IDG Capital. That mix of asset managers, exchange infrastructure, regulated banks, and venture funds gives the token an unusually broad institutional anchor before any public trading begins.
Token economics: 60% for the ecosystem
The token supply breaks down as 60% allocated to the ecosystem, 25% held by Circle itself, and the remaining ~15% not broken out in public materials. ARC's 60% ecosystem share is the highest among recent L1 launches — compare to Aptos (51%), Sui (~26%), Celestia (~20%), Berachain (48.9%), and Monad (49.3%). Circle's 25% bucket is unusual: it's issuer-held by a public-company sponsor, not VC or team equity. That structure raises questions about how governance and incentives will play out once the chain goes live.
What's missing from the whitepaper
The whitepaper sketches a fee-and-burn architecture but leaves key parameters undefined: inflation rate, decay curve, the split between validator rewards and token burns, the breakdown of that remaining ~15% supply, and the vesting schedule. All those details are punted to a future governance vote. The chain is currently running on Proof-of-Authority; Proof-of-Stake is supposed to come later, enabled by the ARC token. For now, the institutional presale at $0.30 sets a floor, but the economic model remains a work in progress.
Mainnet timing and what's next
Mainnet is targeted for summer 2026. The public testnet has been live since October 2025. With the whitepaper out and the presale closed, the next concrete milestone is the governance process that will decide the missing token parameters. Until those numbers are set, the token's long-term value proposition — and how it compares to other L1s — remains an open question.
