Circle's Arc goes live September 16. USDC-native L1 where gas is paid in stablecoins, backed by $222M from a16z, BlackRock and Apollo.

So we mapped both sides. Every DEX building on Arc, from native venues like Tower, Synthra and Hibachi to the majors bringing liquidity in Uniswap, Aerodrome, Curve and Fluid. Plus the payments layer already moving real volume: Blockradar, Myaza and Avenia on the native side, Rain, Thunes, Wirex and Yellow Card on the major one. 20 teams, one chain, all before mainnet.

Arc goes live Sep 16. Circle's USDC-native L1: gas paid in USDC, $222M raised from a16z, BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, ARK, hundreds of millions of testnet transactions already through.

Two things decide if a chain lives: where you trade, and how money moves. Here is the full DEX and payments map of Arc before mainnet.

Native DEXs

Tower Exchange: stablecoin DEX aggregator, Arc's first Builder Spotlight

Synthra Finance: concentrated-liquidity spot plus USDC perps

Hibachi: ZK-verified FX and perps venue, backed by Dragonfly

XyloNet: StableSwap, bridge and vaults, featured on Arc's blog

Achswap: multi-version DEX with bridge and aggregator

Lunya: AMM plus bonding-curve launchpad

Radar DEX: token scanner and v3 launcher

ViFi Labs: on-chain FX for emerging-market currencies

Major DEXs

Uniswap: v4 at mainnet

Aerodrome: ve(3,3) venue by Dromos Labs

Curve: stablecoin-optimized AMM

Fluid: Instadapp's unified DEX and lending hub

Payments, Circle grant cohort

Blockradar: stablecoin wallet infrastructure, $950M processed

Myaza: pan-African neobank, 21 currencies

Payrit: cross-border USDC wallet

Avenia: Brazil's PIX to USDC rail, $1B+ moved

Payments majors

Rain: stablecoin card settlement

Thunes: cross-border network across 130+ countries

Wirex: regulated consumer card platform

Yellow Card: largest licensed African on and off-ramp

20 teams. One chain. Sep 16.

Arc, the USDC-native Layer 1 built by Circle, goes live on mainnet on September 16, 2026. Gas is paid in USDC, the testnet already cleared 244M transactions, and the project raised $222M at a $3B valuation from A16Z, BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, Standard Chartered, ARK Invest and others.

Before a single institution moves in, the trenches are already forming. The most crowded corner of early Arc is the launchpad category: at least 18 teams are competing to become the Pump.fun of Circle's chain. Here is every Arc launchpad we have verified, sorted alphabetically.

The Launchpad Wars

AKA — Launchpad merging NFTs and memecoins, RWA-backed MemeFi.

Archemist.fun ($ARCH, live) — Launchpad plus native AMM, 80% of fees to creators.

arcpad.meme — Memes launched into locked Uniswap V3 liquidity, holders earn fees.

Arcer.fun — Launch tokens via bot, RWA meets degen, zero friction.

Arcfun — Community token launcher built for builders.

Argus ($ARGUS, live) — Launchpad and AMM combo, every idea gets a seat.

Bozo (waitlist) — Memecoin launchpad on Arc.

eve.fun — Simple launch and trade tokens on Arc.

Flipt.fun — Bonding-curve pad, stay bonded and earn your share.

Flutch — Launch infrastructure for builders, no token of its own.

Lolpad (waitlist) — Stocks and memes launchpad.

Minara.Fun (testnet) — Launch and trade with USDC-native liquidity.

NebulaPad — Launchpad and DEX on Arc.

Onmifun — Bonding-curve meme playground for new chains.

Sashimi.fun — Launch, discover, trade tokens on Arc.

Tolly — Trading terminal, launchpad and onchain intelligence.

UBI.fun — The only Uniswap v4-powered launchpad on Arc, 0% launch fee, creator UBI.

Warp — Launchpad and terminal, zero-fee CCTP bridging.

Most of these are pre-mainnet. Some are still on a waitlist (Bozo, Lolpad) or testnet (Minara), and a couple run on repurposed old X accounts (Arcer, NebulaPad), a common trust signal worth checking. Verify contracts, do not confuse a good narrative with a working product, and remember that on Arc, even the gas is a stablecoin.

A full list of Major Upcoming Events, to be updated

Everyone chases live APYs. Smart money watches the opportunities before they open.

Three pre-launch yield opportunities on our radar:

→ Radiant Prime: market-neutral, 25% target, and the only one with independent position verification

→ Yelay: managed Pendle PT, 11–13% target

→ Firelight Phase 2: XRP coverage yield, $8M-backed

For each one we broke down where the yield comes from, the real exposure, and how transparent it is. Everything you'd want to know before deposits go live.

Bitwise is liquidating its spot Dogecoin ETF, BWOW, roughly ten months after the fund began trading on NYSE Arca in Nov 2025.

Interest never showed up. BWOW did about $3M of volume on its debut and faded from there, with assets slipping under $1 million and NAV per share dropping from $19.21 at the end of 2025 to $11.84 by mid-year, a 38% loss in the first half of 2026.

The last trading day is set for October 14, and remaining holders will receive the fund's net asset value in cash around October 22.

The closure is an early casualty of the crowded altcoin-ETF wave that opened US markets to tokens like Dogecoin, and it raises the question of whether other thinly-traded DOGE funds follow.

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OpenAI has launched ChatGPT for Financial Services, a tailored ChatGPT Work experience that pairs built-in premium financial data with GPT-6 Astra's reasoning, built alongside design partners Morgan Stanley and Evercore.

The product indexes and hosts premium datasets from Daloopa, PitchBook, LSEG News and Crunchbase directly on OpenAI infrastructure, covering earnings transcripts, financial statements and company fundamentals, so teams can start working without negotiating separate contracts or wiring up connectors.

Firms can also plug in existing subscriptions from S&P Capital IQ, LSEG, MSCI, Dow Jones Factiva and Moody's, on top of 50+ connectors including FactSet, Preqin and Datasite, all under enterprise security and governance controls.

OpenAI is starting with investment banking and equity research, the two areas its design partners flagged as the biggest pain points, and says it will use the work to expand into other financial services categories over time.

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Coinbase is renaming Base App back to Coinbase Wallet, roughly a year after it rebranded the wallet as an all-in-one social, payments and trading everything app.

The July 2025 relaunch folded a Farcaster-powered social feed, mini-apps, chat, USDC payments and onchain trading into one Base-powered super-app. The social layer never landed: Coinbase pulled the Farcaster feed in February to refocus on trading, wound down its Base Creator Rewards program after paying out over $450K to about 17,000 creators, and Base lead Jesse Pollak stepped back from app leadership, calling the social bet "wrong." CEO Brian Armstrong later said the SocialFi features "didn't quite work."

The rename marks a retreat to Coinbase's core wallet identity and a trading-first product, a notable climbdown from the "everything app" ambition it pitched just over a year ago at its "A New Day One" event.

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The week the institutions stopped watching from the sidelines — a central bank, a $21B exchange bet, and the first staked TRON ETF all landed at once.

Five that actually mattered:

— Nasdaq's venture arm invests $100M in Payward

— MetaMask spins out of Consensys as an independent company

— First Staked TRON ETF Debuts in the US

— Bundesbank is testing ZKsync's open-sourced Prividium

— Etherscan launched Flow, mapping how funds move

UniLend has announced the next chapter for its community, transitioning from the UniLend Protocol to Maxi, a new decentralized, social-first crypto trading platform focused on asset discovery, research, and trading across major blockchain ecosystems.

All eligible UFT holders will be offered a 1:1 migration to MAXI, meaning 1,000 UFT can be migrated into 1,000 MAXI. The ratio refers to token quantity and does not represent or guarantee equivalent market value.

Maxi is designed to combine social-driven asset discovery with trading and AI-assisted research, allowing users to better understand projects and move from discovery to execution within a more unified experience.

The team said active development of UniLend ceased last year after the protocol failed to achieve sustainable traction.

No migration action is required from UFT holders at this time.

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