Circle’s Arc mainnet went live yesterday and we covered how the EVM-compatible Layer 1 is seen as a network for financial markets, real-time money movement and AI agents transacting on their own. The founding validators, tokenized collateral from BlackRock and Securitize, StableFX, Circle Payments Network, $USDC gas pitched at treasurers who need predictable costs all point to the chain being institutional in nature. However, the activity on the network on day one looked nothing like that.
Source: Dune
According to data compiled by onchain analyst adam_tehc, Arc saw $410.8 million in DEX volume and 7,763,670 transactions on day one of mainnet. Memecoin launchpads accounted for $336.3 million of that trading, or roughly 82%.
One Launchpad Took Half the Chain
A single launchpad called arguspad.io did close to half of the volume on the day, drawing in $202.35 million. Minara.fun came in second place with $36.41 million, tollylabs.com at $19.65 million and redardex.pro at $13.11 million. There was activity on a total of nineteen launchpads. That said, the volumes after the top five thins out fast.
The number of tokens created yesterday also followed the same shape. Traders deployed over 97K tokens across these Arc launchpads and 83,751 of those came from arguspad.io. What’s remarkable is that this single day token launch figure on arguspad.io is more than pump.fun’s best day on record.
Robinhood Chain Opened at $568,000. Arc Opened at $410 Million.
Noticeable activity on new chains usually takes weeks. Robinhood Chain, which has been one of the standout networks over the past few months, recorded $568,630 in DEX volume on its first day of mainnet on June 30. The network did not clear Arc’s day-one number until a little over a week later, when it printed $581.12 million. Arc’s debut landed around 720 times larger.
Source: Dune
Some of that is timing. Arc launched with Aave, Morpho and Uniswap already deployed, plus exchange access from Binance, Kraken, OKX and others live at block one. The launchpads walked into a chain that already had liquidity sitting there.
Robinhood Chain’s First Weeks Looked Like This Too
Robinhood Chain is the closest precedent available, and it cuts against the easy reading. It launched with an institutional pitch of its own around tokenized stocks, then spent its opening weeks trading like a memecoin chain. Total RWA value on Robinhood Chain now sits at $168.13 million as of September 17, spread across tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities and treasuries. Equities make up the bulk, with commodity and treasury value only building out from early September.
Speculative activity came first there. The real assets arrived later. Whether Arc repeats that sequence is unknowable two days in.
Non-Launchpad Volume Came In Near $75 Million
Strip the launchpads out and Arc did about $74.6 million on day one. That is the number tied to what Circle actually built the chain for: $USDC-denominated settlement, tokenized collateral through USYC and BlackRock’s BUIDL, StableFX currency swaps, institutional payment rails. On its own, $74.6 million is a solid opening for any new Layer 1.
Launchpad volume is also the part most likely to fade. Memecoin activity on fresh chains tends to run hot for a few days or weeks before collapsing once the first cohort rotates out. If non-launchpad volume keeps climbing while the memecoin share drops, Arc is converting attention into usage. If both fall together, September 16 was a liquidity event and not much more.
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