On the eve of the launch of Circle's stablecoin public chain Arc, various cross-chain tutorials flooded the screen. How to transfer USDC to Arc, which launchpad is worth ambushing, and who will become the first golden dog on the new chain—retail investors have already done their homework in advance.

Circle's brand effect, the early dividends of a new chain, and the previous wealth-making myth of the Robinhood chain are enough to make retail investors look forward to the opening. After launch, launchpads like Argus quickly became targets of capital pursuit, with everyone waiting for the familiar plot to play out again.

However, just one day later, Arc's meme market had an atmosphere of "bodies strewn everywhere." The discussion shifted from finding the leader to whether the team actually understands memes, and what else this chain has to offer.

What exactly went wrong with Arc?

Launchpad Overflow

Before Arc launched, someone had already compiled a list of over 50 launchpads.

The new chain hadn't even had time to form its own meme culture, and the launchpad business was already fully occupied.

This is not hard to understand. The launchpad model is easy to replicate, can quickly create new assets, and can also earn fees from trading. For developers, rather than spending time exploring a new玩法, it's better to first bring over already-validated products and try to capture the trading volume at the chain's opening.

But a good business for developers doesn't necessarily correspond to a good market for retail investors.

Every platform wants to prove it is the leader, every community wants to keep buying pressure on its own coin, and there is no consensus among communities on launchpads—the diversion is too severe.

Clumsy Team

The launchpads diverted liquidity, and Arc team's poor marketing made it even harder to concentrate consensus.

Arc product team member Rachel Mayer posted a picture of a dog, with the caption "Arc's Duke is here," and added that she heard this was Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's dog. In the picture, the dog's background and collar both bore the Arc logo, making the hint obvious enough.

This approach can certainly attract the attention of the "p small generals." The problem is that this kind of blunt and straightforward shilling no longer works on retail investors.

Even the team's livestream failed to salvage the impression. The multi-person video call screen was ridiculed by him: "Arc's livestream is scarier than a Federal Reserve interest rate meeting." These taunts based on appearance and visual style certainly cannot prove the team has problems, but they show that the trust the team hoped to build did not reach this audience.

The meme community amplifies details and also mocks deliberate marketing in return. Blunt shilling, conflicting hints, and off-putting livestream vibes combined to form the assessment that "the team simply doesn't understand memes."

Arc originally had a clear positioning as a stablecoin chain, but now it's stuck between enterprise finance and meme hype. He questioned that the team simply saw Robinhood succeed and decided to copy it, without understanding why that playbook worked.

This is also the harder problem for Arc to solve.

Copied the playbook, not the buyers

A large part of Robinhood's appeal comes from the retail trading gateway behind it. For on-chain players, hyping around Robinhood means buying the expectation that existing retail users will enter on-chain in the future.

Circle has a different kind of advantage. USDC, payment networks, and institutional clients can support settlement and financial applications, but have nothing to do with memes. Enterprises using stablecoins and retail traders willing to repeatedly trade cats and dogs have vastly different needs.

Arc didn't prepare carelessly. unipcs acknowledged its integration of tools like fomo and Dexscreener at launch, even calling it a well-executed public chain launch recently. He previously had little interest in Arc, but changed his view after learning that fomo would integrate with Arc.

But he also repeatedly emphasized that he treated Arc as a short-term opportunity to get in and out within days, because why would traders stay here long-term?

The playbook Arc showed retail on day one was too similar to Robinhood. The features that truly belong to Arc haven't yet become the protagonist of this meme rally.

Arc's own story

Arc's advantage over other chains is the other capabilities it has built around stablecoin finance.

For example, foreign exchange. According to Bankless, StableFX connects USDC with different local stablecoins. Following this direction, Arc's future memes could try pairing with stablecoins of different currencies, connecting local currencies, local communities, and their respective familiar cultural symbols.

Privacy is also a direction. Circle's plan is to develop optional privacy features, protecting balances and transaction details through trusted execution environments, and allowing for selective disclosure of information.

If this capability is implemented, developers can experiment with mechanisms around anonymous identities, selective disclosure of holdings, and other designs, changing the way interactions expose all behavior on a public ledger.

Agents may also return to the spotlight. Arc's Agent Stack provides agents with policy-constrained wallets, as well as infrastructure for discovering and paying for services. The Arc team is continuously researching verifiable identity, history, reputation, and credit. Perhaps Arc can make the Agent narrative great again.

Circle's reputation is enough to attract traders, but that is far from sufficient. Next, Arc needs to deliver something of its own.

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