A Record Launch Wave That Faded Fast Token creation on Circle's Arc (@arc) blockchain erupted at launch before collapsing almost as quickly as it began, according to data from GeckoTerminal.
Token creation on Circle's Arc (@arc) blockchain erupted at launch before collapsing almost as quickly as it began, according to data from GeckoTerminal. New token launches peaked at 83,400 on September 16, the same day Arc's public mainnet went live, then fell to just 4,100 by September 24. That is a drop of roughly 95% in eight days.
The concentration was striking. Of the more than 211,828 tokens tracked on the network, over 175,000 were created in just the first three days between September 16 and 18. By late September, more than 97% of those tokens showed zero trading volume, leaving a graveyard of dormant assets that likely never attracted meaningful liquidity.
The pattern is not unique to Arc. According to CoinGecko statistics, 53.2% of all crypto tokens recorded on the GeckoTerminal platform had failed as of December 31, 2025, with approximately 11.6 million tokens failing throughout 2025 alone. Arc's launch compressed that same dynamic into a matter of days.
Circle launched Arc as a blockchain designed as an "economic operating system" for payments, tokenized markets, lending and trading. It debuted with more than 100 institutions and ecosystem companies participating or exploring the network, including BlackRock, Mastercard, Visa, BNY and HSBC. Transaction fees are denominated in USDC rather than a native gas token, a design intended to make costs predictable for institutional users.
Traders had been positioning for a memecoin rush similar to what happened on Robinhood Chain after its July 2026 debut, and the data confirms that anticipation translated into action. The gap between Arc's institutional pitch and the speculative wave that greeted its mainnet was hard to miss. Within hours of launch, crypto Twitter was talking about dog tokens, not a highly decentralized chain built to move big institutional digital dollars.
Arc's value proposition was never going to be proven on day one, and the real test is whether tokenized funds, institutional settlement and payment flows show up in the coming months. For now, the data offers a stark illustration of the gap between speculative activity and durable on-chain utility.
Sources:CoinDesk: Circle Debuts Arc BlockchainCryptonomist: Arc Blockchain Mainnet LaunchDeFi Defenders: Arc's First Day
