Circle blockchain Arc's first day was dominated by memecoins, and the traders behind them had already moved on by Thursday morning.

  • Arc processed 7.83 million transactions in its first 24 hours, but only about 624,000 USDC transfers over the chain's entire life — the payments use case it was built for barely registered.
  • Day-one DEX volume reached roughly $82 million, less than a tenth of the $878 million Robinhood Chain hit during its own memecoin takeover in July. Top tokens including TOLLY, LONG and COOL are down 56% to 77% from launch highs.
  • Circle's VP of product for Arc posted an AI-generated image promoting a memecoin on launch day, drawing about 1 million views and accusations that the company was shilling tokens to bootstrap its own network.

The chain processed 7.83 million transactions in its first 24 hours, but almost none of it was payments. Lifetime USDC transfers stand at about 624,000, according to Arc's Blockscout explorer. Some 400,000 new accounts appeared in a day, and more than 73,000 contracts were deployed. Average fees quadrupled, to three cents.

Memecoins were filling the blocks, leading to some traders writing the chain off.

"Arc is one day old, and every coin is already down like 50-80%," trader wale.moca posted on X. Asked whether it might recover, he replied: "It's cooked." Another user called it a one-day arc.

Memecoins prices on Arc are consistent with the negative sentiment, with TOLLY down 56%, LONG 77%, COOL 75% from launch highs.

Day-one DEX volume on Arc finished at around $82 million, compared with the $878 million Robinhood Chain did on July 12, when its own institutional pitch was overtaken by memecoins and a cat token briefly hit a $156 million market cap. Arc's largest token, ARGUS, is worth $16 million. Its second- and third-largest are cirBTC and EURC — Circle's own products.

The sharper criticism is that Circle invited this. Rachel Mayer, Circle's VP of product for Arc, posted an AI-generated image promoting DUKE, a memecoin, writing that it was Allaire's dog. The post drew about 1 million views and a wave of hostile replies accusing Circle of shilling tokens to bootstrap its own network.

"You can clearly see a lot of their team fundamentally misunderstands meme culture," wrote Abbas Khan. "Now it's stuck in this weird middle ground where nobody really knows whether it's supposed to be a meme chain or a corporate stablecoin chain."

Circle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The chain itself is performing as designed, with half-second blocks being processed with no congestion, and DeFi platforms like Aave and Morpho live. But waning sentiment has led to feelings of frustration from the memecoin crowd, despite speculative token activity driving most of the day-one volume.

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