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On September 24, 2026, NEAR Protocol surged 80% on the weekly chart to break above $4. On September 15, it was still $2.34; three days later it hit $3.45—a 45% gain. Catalysts like Hyperliquid integration, confidential transactions going live, and TVL approaching $190 million have pulled this chain—once dubbed the "Ethereum killer"—back into the spotlight.
But in the light of day, the shadows deserve closer scrutiny: NEAR claims 1 million TPS throughput, yet its daily revenue is only about $5,000. It cut annual inflation from 5% to 2.5%—but the community vote did not pass the 66.67% supermajority threshold; the core team bypassed the governance process through software updates. Its chain abstraction layer handles over $15 billion in cross-chain traffic—yet whether the NEAR token truly captures value from it remains an open question.

On September 22, 2026, Bitcoin broke through $86,000; the crypto Fear & Greed Index rose to 78—extreme greed. But the real focus isn’t on the price—it’s on a clue that most people overlook: AI agents are evolving from “can chat” to “can spend,” and the financial infrastructure enabling this leap is being built on the blockchain at astonishing speed.
Circle’s Agent Stack, Coinbase’s x402 protocol, Stripe’s preview of machine payments—when payment giants, stablecoin issuers, and cloud infrastructure providers all bet on the same direction, it isn’t coincidence; it’s a sign of an impending paradigm shift.

Circle Arc mainnet is live. CEO Jeremy Allaire calls it “Circle’s most important milestone since USDC.”
A Layer 1 public chain dominated by a stablecoin issuer, using USDC as its gas token, with BlackRock and Visa serving as validators—what does that even mean?
I. A public chain led by a stablecoin issuer is born
On September 16, 2026, a landmark moment arrived for the crypto industry: Circle—the issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin, USDC—officially launched the Arc public mainnet.
This isn’t another Ethereum L2, nor a fork of some existing chain. Arc is an independent Layer 1 blockchain with its own consensus mechanism, execution environment, and fee model. More importantly, it is tailor-made for stablecoin finance: USDC as the native gas token; 11 founding validators including BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard; 22 fiat stablecoins integrated via the StableFX foreign exchange engine; BlackRock’s tokenized T-bond fund (BUIDL) and Circle’s tokenized money market fund (USYC) natively integrated.