CoinSpotMarket Update
Circle's Arc Blockchain Launch & Solana's Asset Tokenisation Boom
7 mins
4 hours ago
7 mins
4 hours ago
Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, launched its own blockchain called Arc. Unlike general-purpose blockchains that try to do everything, Arc has been designed and optimised for financial markets, real-time money movement, and agentic economic activity.
More than 100 applications were available on Arc upon launch, with over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders participating. This includes a handful of high-profile names in traditional finance that are serving as founding validators of the Arc blockchain, including BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard.
Various projects in the decentralised finance (DeFi) category were among those applications available on day one, including Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE) and Morpho (MORPHO).
Arc had been in development for nearly two years, and its launch comes ahead of the widely anticipated launch of Tempo, the blockchain being developed by payments giant Stripe in collaboration with Paradigm. Tempo is expected to go live by the end of the year.
Solana continues to see strong signs of growth in the categories of asset tokenisation and real-world assets (RWAs). According to data from Blockworks, Solana now houses more than $870 million ($620 million USD) worth of tokenised securities on its network, more than triple the amount at the start of the year.
Another related metric also at all-time highs is unique holders of tokenised equities on the Solana network. As per Blockworks, this number has ballooned to 850,000. It was only towards the end of May when this metric was crossing 200,000 unique holders.
RWAs continue to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the digital asset ecosystem, driven by institutional adoption, expanding product offerings, and infrastructure developments across public and private blockchains. The recent launch of Robinhood Chain is also proving to accelerate RWA adoption.
The heads of the U.S. federal commodities and securities regulators pledged to press ahead with accommodating crypto regulation using their existing powers after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act earlier this week.
In a post on X, CFTC Chair Mike Selig said his commission is “locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.”
Selig’s counterpart at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, echoed a similar sentiment in comments after the failed progress on the CLARITY Act. “I have been unequivocal: with or without legislation, we will act decisively within the SEC’s statutory authority to deliver certainty for American investors and for the entrepreneurs shaping our technological future. Stay tuned.”
Agency-driven regulations from the SEC and CFTC will provide some immediate operational clarity for aspects of the crypto industry and market. However, they risk not being as durable (i.e. potential to be reversed by future administrations) compared to if legislation had been passed through Congress.
