Circle's Arc blockchain, launched Wednesday with founding validators including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, and DTCC, processed 7.83 million transactions in its first 24 hours. However, most of the activity was driven by memecoins, with day-one DEX volume reaching approximately $82 million. Circle's VP of product for Arc, Rachel Mayer, promoted a memecoin named DUKE, which CEO Jeremy Allaire's dog inspired, drawing criticism for shilling tokens to bootstrap the network. Traders noted memecoins on Arc were already down 50-80% from launch highs, leading to market confusion over whether Arc is intended as a memecoin or corporate stablecoin chain.