Meme Coin Launchpads Captured 82% of Arc's First Day Trading Volume

Meme coin launchpads accounted for roughly 82% of the $410.8 million in decentralized exchange volume that Circle’s Arc network cleared on its first day of public mainnet.

Circle built Arc for financial markets, real-time money movement, and agentic economic activity. Instead, speculative traders set the tone on the first day.

Circle Pitched Institutions Meme Coin Traders Showed Up First

Arc is an open Layer 1 network built by Circle, the issuer of USDC (USDC). The company marketed Arc as an “economic operating system” for the internet. Its founding validator set includes BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, DTCC, and ICE.

More than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had already deployed on or tested Arc’s private mainnet before the public opening.

Asset managers, including Bitwise, BlackRock, and Janus Henderson, are moving tokenized funds onto the chain. Payment firms such as Visa and MoneyGram plan to run stablecoin settlement through it.

Trading venues arrived alongside them. Uniswap, Robinhood, and Pump.fun are among the platforms expanding spot, perpetual, and cross-chain markets.

“Today we are switching on something the world has never had before: an open, neutral, always-on economic operating system for the internet, secured by some of the most important financial institutions on Earth, and built for a world where both people and machines transact,” Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Circle, said.

However, on-chain data compiled by analyst Adam shows the opening day belonged to a different crowd.

Arguspad Swallowed Half of Day One

Launchpad tokens generated $336.26 million of Arc’s first-day trading, according to Dune data. Arguspad alone handled $202.35 million of that total.

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Minara.fun followed with $36.41 million and Tollylabs with $19.65 million. Arguspad also minted 83,751 tokens in 24 hours, more than 86% of every token created on the chain.

Overall, traders minted 97,025 tokens and pushed 7.76 million transactions through the chain on September 16

Traders had flagged the setup before launch, drawing a straight line to Robinhood Chain. It cleared just $14.74 million on its own opening day, July 1. Arc’s debut ran nearly 28 times larger

Now, the key question is durability. Robinhood Chain cooled through August before reaching a $3.7 billion daily record this month, and Arc’s coming weeks will show whether institutional flow or launchpad churn sets the pace.

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