Arc, One Month In: the Tools That Trade On It, the Numbers, and What Survived
Last verified: October 27, 2026 (FOMO's Arc support confirmed in-app; one-month readings from DefiLlama on October 17; Cielo and Maestro trading confirmed from their own announcement channels; the chain's own account read on X). First written on mainnet day, September 16, 2026. Chain settings read on docs.arc.io on September 16; tool support from official posts and from our own in-app chain counts, dates per row. We have not traded on Arc yet. Referral links marked where present.
Already sold? Open BasedBot on Telegram (ref link, it pays us and costs you nothing) · Open Banana Gun on Telegram (ref link, Arc is one of its ten chains) · Get the FOMO app (ref link, it pays us and cuts your fee to 0.45%)
Or keep reading: the official settings, the tools and the bridge rule are below.
The short version: Arc is Circle's chain: USDC is the gas token, blocks are final in under a second, it runs the EVM, and its validators are institutions, not anonymous nodes. Mainnet went live on September 16, 2026, as announced.
Six of the tools we cover trade it: BasedBot, Banana Gun, GMGN and FOMO from day one, Cielo since September 22, and Maestro, which runs one of the two built-in bridges to Arc.
One month in, the chain kept its money and lost its casino. Value locked and stablecoins held above $500M; DEX volume over seven days fell from $388M to $258M between October 4 and 17, and the whole week now trades less than the largest first-day count ($410.8M). The chain's own account stopped posting about memecoins and started posting about Aave, grants and agents.
Still not confirmed: any ARC token or airdrop, and any launchpad with a track record.
Read this before you touch Arc. Written on launch day; re-read October 17, 2026, nothing below has changed. Launch mornings are when wallets get emptied. Five things that were already circulating on September 16, 2026:
- Fake bridges. People reported losing funds through unofficial bridge sites that morning. Never reach a bridge through a search ad, a tweet or a DM; type the address yourself.
- Fake network settings. A third-party RPC was being passed around as "the" Arc RPC. The official one is rpc.mainnet.arc.io, chain ID 5042, nothing else (table below).
- Fake ARC airdrops. Circle has announced no public token, no claim, no snapshot. Any "claim your ARC" page is a drainer.
- Fake tokens and "number one launchpads". Nothing on Arc has a verifiable track record yet. A token trending in a Telegram channel is paid placement, not demand.
- Fake support. No bot, bridge or chain team will DM you first.
How to get on Arc: three routes, easiest first
More: the two bridges traders used on launch morning
Relay (relay.link, which advertises zero fees on USDC-to-USDC transfers) and Jumper (jumper.xyz). We have not run them on Arc yet; when we do, the time and cost land here. Type those addresses yourself.
The official settings, and only those
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Network name | Arc |
| Chain ID | 5042 |
| RPC | https://rpc.mainnet.arc.io |
| Explorer | https://explorer.arc.io |
| Gas token | USDC, 18 decimals |
Source: docs.arc.io, Connect to Arc, read on September 16, 2026. Community guides were already circulating a different RPC that morning; use Circle's, and add the network by hand in your wallet rather than from a link.
Pick your door
The tools, compared
| Tool | Type | Fee | Arc support | Source, dated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 BasedBot | Telegram bot | 1%, cashback 5-25% | Live, announced | Official X post, Sept 16, 2026; Arc (USDC) in the docs' bridge table official |
 Maestro | Telegram bot | 1%, cashback 15-30% | Live, with a built-in bridge | Official announcement channel: "Arc Mainnet is live on Maestro" and "the first Telegram bot with a bridge to Arc Network" official; in the selector when we counted the bot Aug 27 in-app |
 GMGN | Terminal + bot | 1% flat | Live from day 0 | Official post "Arc is live on GMGN from day 0", Sept 16, 2026 official; already in the selector when we counted it Aug 19 in-app; day-one trade not yet tested |
 FOMO | Mobile app | 0.5% (min $0.95) | Live on day one | FOMO's own pinned post "Arc, now live on fomo", Sept 16, 2026 official, after Arc's announcement of Sept 15; on the app's deposit screen Oct 27 verified in-app Oct 27 |
 Tator | Web + iOS, in observation | 0.80% spot | Listed, not recommended yet | Google Play chain list, Sept 1, 2026; still in our incubator |
 Banana Gun | Telegram bot | 1% (0.5% manual ETH) | Live on day one | Official post "Arc trenches officially opened", Sept 16, 2026: bridging, market buys, limits and copy trading official; confirmed to us directly by the growth lead on Sept 17 |
 Cielo | Terminal + bot | 0.6% / 1% | Live since Sept 22 | Tracking from Sept 16 ("Trading is next"), then "Arc trading is live on Cielo" on Sept 22, 2026: terminal, bot, agents, USDC, 0.6% and 1% official |
Badges: in-app means we counted or used it ourselves inside the app on that date; official means the tool's own post or documentation. No row carries a trade badge from us yet; we have not traded on Arc.
What Arc actually is
Arc is built by Circle, the company behind USDC. Its launch post of September 16, 2026: USDC as native gas, sub-second finality, EVM compatibility, institutional validators.
More: who validates Arc, and which DeFi apps and wallets Circle named for launch
The validators are named: BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo and Visa, per Circle's press release of August 5, 2026. It is a proof-of-authority chain: fast and institutional, not permissionless in the way Solana or Base are.
DeFi announced by Circle for launch: Uniswap v4 (already live on the private mainnet in August), Aave, Morpho, Aerodrome. Wallets and exchanges named: MetaMask, Ledger, Binance Wallet, Kraken, Upbit, Fireblocks. OpenSea announced NFT support from day one.
The ARC token: what is announced and what is not
Circle closed a $222M private presale for an ARC token in May 2026 (a16z, BlackRock, Apollo among buyers, per Decrypt). As of October 17, 2026, no public token launch, listing or airdrop has been announced.
More: why every ARC claim site is a scam until Circle says otherwise
So any "ARC airdrop", claim site or snapshot date circulating today does not come from Circle. Treat it as a scam until Circle says otherwise; this page will say so, dated, if that changes.
The bridge rule, because people lost money on launch morning
Fund Arc only through routes Circle documents, or through a bot you already use that bridges for you. Circle's cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) is the native way USDC moves; Kraken is named by Circle as a launch partner. Any bridge you found through a tweet or a search ad is exactly the kind that empties wallets in week one. We will bridge a small amount ourselves through an official route and report the time and cost here.
More: what was reported on launch morning, and why we could not verify it
Community posts on launch morning already reported users losing funds through unofficial bridges. We could not verify those losses, and we do not need to: the rule is the same on every new chain, and it is the whole of our new chain guide in one line.
More: the two other rules for a one-day-old chain
Two more rules, condensed: contract addresses from primary sources only (the token's official channels, cross-checked, never an address posted "helpfully" in a group), and trade like the infrastructure is beta, because on day one it is: small sizes, wider slippage, profits skimmed out.
Day one in numbers: four figures, four sources
How much Arc traded on September 16 depends on who counted: five times apart between the largest and the smallest figure. What they agree on: most of it went through launchpads that were a day old.
| Figure | What it counts | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $410.8M DEX volume, 7.76M transactions | All DEX activity, launchpads included | Dune dashboard by adam_tehc, via Cryptopolitan, Sept 17 source |
| $336M | Memecoin launchpads only: arguspad.io about $202M, minara.fun $36M, tollylabs.com $20M, radardex.pro $13M | Same Dune dashboard, relayed by Fortune on Oct 6 |
| About $175M a day | Measured by KuCoin's research desk; about $64M on DefiLlama's dashboard for the same period | KuCoin insight, Sept 17 |
| About $82M | DefiLlama's DEX figure, which does not index every launchpad | whales.market review, Sept 18 |
One month in, read by us
We read DefiLlama's Arc page on three Saturdays. Here is the series, not a verdict.
| Oct 4 | Oct 11 | Oct 17 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value locked | $558.6M | $556.2M | $528.1M |
| Stablecoins | $519.1M | $509.1M | $621.9M |
| DEX volume, 7 days | $388.2M | $307.0M | $258.5M |
| App fees, 24h | $161,666 | $118,474 | $60,824 |
More: how to read the series (volume, fees, the two stablecoin reversals)
The seven-day volume fell by a third in two weeks and now sits below the largest first-day count alone ($410.8M on Dune). App fees divided by 2.7. Stablecoins went down one week and up 17% the next: two reversals in two weeks, which is why this is a series and not a trend.
More: what grew instead (Aave V4, Morpho), and what day two already showed
What grew is DeFi, not memecoins: Aave V4 went live on Arc on October 15, 2026, per the chain's own account, and Morpho and Aave hold most of the value locked. Day two had already said it: more than 97,000 tokens created in 24 hours, 83,751 of them by Arguspad, and the leaders down 56% to 77% from their highs source.
Launchpads: one is now promoted by the chain itself
On October 14, 2026, Arc's official account posted "Arc, Arguspad. Every idea gets a seat. Live on Arc." That is the launchpad that minted 86% of the tokens on day two. A month on, it is the chain's showcase. We note both facts side by side and leave the conclusion to you.
More: the eleven launchpads named so far, the Bullcheese fee split, and the comparison that stopped updating
Eleven launchpads have been named to us or by the press: the four from day one above, Bullcheese, and six more from a comparison published by TrustSwap, which operates Bullcheese and says so (ARCLaunch, Arch, sharc.fun, ubi.fun, 5042.fun, AstraPump). We have not used any of them, and none has a track record older than a month. "The number one launchpad on Arc" is still a claim, not a fact.
On Bullcheese, the line that matters came from a review: 1% fee split 75/25, no bonding curve, liquidity locked through Team Finance, and a single wallet controlling fees and parameters with no timelock source. Read that before the fee split.
TrustSwap's own Arc comparison, which applies our method of dated verification and declares its conflict, stopped updating on September 20, 2026. A month is a long time on this chain.
What we check next
Our own first swap on Arc through BasedBot, with the fee and slippage measured. We have not made that swap yet (as of October 17, 2026); this line will carry the date and the receipt when we do. The DefiLlama series continues every Saturday. And which of the eleven launchpads is still alive at the two-month mark, with a date.
Try it
Open BasedBot on Telegram Get the FOMO app
(ref links) Both buttons are referral links: the tools pay us a share of fees at no cost to you, and FOMO cuts your fee to 0.45%. They are the two doors we would use on Arc ourselves; every tool in the table got the same row and the same dated check either way.
FAQ
Which trading bots support Arc?
Six of the tools we cover trade Arc as of October 17, 2026: BasedBot, Banana Gun, GMGN and FOMO from day one, Cielo since September 22, and Maestro. Each one's date and source is in the tools table.
What are the official Arc mainnet settings?
Chain ID 5042, RPC https://rpc.mainnet.arc.io, explorer https://explorer.arc.io, gas in USDC with 18 decimals, per docs.arc.io on September 16, 2026. Add it by hand in your wallet from those values.
Is there an ARC token airdrop?
No public launch or airdrop announced as of October 17, 2026. The May 2026 presale was private. Anything promising a claim today is not from Circle.
Is Arc still active one month after launch?
Yes, but differently: value locked and stablecoins stayed above $500M through October 17, 2026, while seven-day DEX volume fell from $388M to $258M between October 4 and 17. The full series is in one month in, read by us.
How we're paid on this page: the review links above lead to pages whose outbound links may be referral links, always marked "(ref link)" there.
BasedBot, Maestro, Banana Gun, GMGN and Cielo pay us a referral share through those marked links; FOMO pays us and gives you a fee discount; Tator is under observation and gets no recommendation here. Every tool in the table got the same row and the same dated check either way.
New tools the week they launch. The settings and fees that quietly cost you money. Alpha I would tell a friend.
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