Blockchains

The Layer 1 charges gas in USDC and runs proof-of-authority across a permissioned set of 11 institutions plus Circle. More than 100 applications are live at launch, with Aave, Morpho and Uniswap anchoring DeFi. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens this week without committing to a public launch.

The deployment gives developers Circle-issued dollar and euro tokens plus a burn-and-mint route for moving USDC across supported chains.

Official materials name Circle and 11 founding validators, while an Arc documentation page describes approximately 20 validators at launch.

OCEAN will refund roughly 0.3 BTC to miners whose hashrate its Stratum templates sent to the breakaway chain for about 18 hours.

Circle's own disclaimer says Arc will be "operated by a permissioned validator set" and has not been reviewed by the New York State Department of Financial Services or any other regulator.

Optimism says Toss is the fourth regulated financial institution in a year to pick the OP Stack, after Bitpanda, Kraken and Mitsui.

At a London keynote, the trading platform opened its Arbitrum-based Layer 2 to the public, rolled out new stock tokens and a Morpho-powered lending product, and confirmed launches in Canada and Singapore alongside plans for crypto trading in the UK.

Canton Network, the privacy-enabled institutional blockchain built by Digital Asset, generated $60.2 million in fees over the trailing 30 days, outpacing Tron's $27.6 million and Ethereum's $11.3 million by a wide margin, according to DefiLlama data.

Sophon is decommissioning its zkSync-based Layer 2 chain and pivoting to Soph+, a consumer product studio building exclusively on Base. The shutdown caps a chain that raised $60 million through node sales but attracted fewer than 200 daily users and generated roughly $30 in daily fees.

The Ethereum Foundation has eliminated 54 positions, about 20% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring tied to its updated spending mandate. Vitalik Buterin announced a 40% annual budget cut targeting a reduction in treasury spend from 15% to 5% by 2030. Arkham Intelligence places EF's ETH holdings at approximately $209 million, a nearly six-year low.