How to Choose an RPC Provider for Circle's Arc

Updated October 22, 2026 · Spectrum Nodes

Short answer: To choose an RPC provider for Circle's Arc, check five things: node freshness, log and receipt access for USDC reconciliation, archive depth, upgrade handling on Arc's pre 1.0 node software and SOC 2 evidence. Arc finalises transactions in under a second, so a lagging RPC node can report a payment later than Arc settled it. Spectrum Nodes covers Arc for RPC.

Arc is the stablecoin native layer 1 blockchain built by Circle, and its public mainnet launched on September 16, 2026. An RPC provider runs the nodes your app reads from and sends transactions through. On a chain this fast, that provider can become the slowest step in a payment.

Key Facts About Arc

What Arc is: a stablecoin native layer 1 blockchain built by Circle and compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Public mainnet: live since September 16, 2026, according to Circle.
Chain ID: 5042 on mainnet (Arc docs).
Public RPC URL: rpc.mainnet.arc.io (Arc docs).
Gas token: USDC, so transaction fees on Arc are denominated in dollars.
Finality: deterministic and under one second, using Malachite, a Tendermint BFT consensus engine. Transactions can't be reorganised.
Block time: roughly 500 milliseconds, based on Uniswap's Arc deployment notes.
USDC decimals: 18 on the native interface and 6 on the ERC20 interface at 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000, both reading the same balance.
Validators: permissioned proof of authority, with 11 founding validators alongside Circle.
RPC interface: standard Ethereum JSON RPC over HTTP and WebSocket.

What Is Circle's Arc?

Arc is an open layer 1 blockchain from Circle, the issuer of USDC, built for payments, foreign exchange, capital markets and tokenised assets. Developers can deploy contracts on Arc without approval, while block validation is limited to a permissioned set of institutions. Circle opened Arc's public mainnet on September 16, 2026, after a private mainnet with more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders.

Eleven institutions join Circle as Arc's founding validators: BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation and Visa. BlackRock is expected to deploy its BUIDL fund on Arc, and DTCC is working with Circle to tokenise DTC custodied assets on Arc from the second half of 2027.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the global financial system "deserves a blockchain network it can trust." Before mainnet, Arc's public testnet logged more than half a billion transactions across nearly 3 million wallets. For another chain built around stablecoin payments, see what is Tempo Network.

Why Does Arc Change What You Need From an RPC Provider?

Arc moves several jobs into the protocol, but how your app reads Arc still runs through an RPC endpoint.

USDC pays for gas. Transactions are final on inclusion and can't be reorganised. Blocklist checks run inside the protocol, so a USDC transfer to or from a blocklisted address fails even with enough balance.

Arc's compatibility guide tells teams porting EVM apps to focus their review on balance reads, value transfers and history indexing. Every one of those runs through an RPC endpoint. An endpoint that lags a few blocks, or throttles eth_getLogs (the method that returns event logs for a block range) in a busy hour, can leave a payments team reconciling by hand.

Arc RPC Infographic-selection.png

What Should You Check Before Choosing an Arc RPC Provider?

Arc speaks standard Ethereum JSON RPC, so connecting is simple. Running payments on that connection is the harder part. Put these five checks to any Arc RPC provider.

Check	Why it matters on Arc	What to ask
Node freshness	Final on inclusion, blocks roughly every 500 ms	How far behind the chain head do your Arc nodes run under load?
Logs and receipts	Two USDC interfaces over one balance, two Transfer logs	Can `eth_getLogs` keep up with reconciliation jobs at peak?
Archive and tracing	A pruned node keeps about 33 hours of history	Do you run Arc archive nodes with debug and trace?
Upgrades	Arc's node software is still pre 1.0	How far ahead of a release do you patch, and do you warn customers?
SOC 2 and hardware	Institutional buyers run vendor risk reviews	Can you share a SOC 2 report and say whose hardware serves requests?

1. How Fresh Are the Provider's Arc Nodes?

Node freshness is how close a node stays to the newest block, called the chain head. It matters on Arc because Arc's documentation says transactions are final on inclusion and offchain systems can act after a single confirmation.

With Arc blocks landing roughly every 500 milliseconds, an RPC node running two seconds behind the chain head is about four blocks stale. That is long enough for a checkout page to show a settled USDC payment as pending. Ask each provider how far behind the chain head its Arc nodes run under load. For why nodes drift, read why blockchain nodes fall out of sync.

2. Can the Provider Serve Logs and Receipts for USDC Reconciliation?

USDC reconciliation on Arc depends on reading logs and receipts correctly, because USDC on Arc has two interfaces over one balance.

eth_getBalance returns the native balance in 18 decimals.
balanceOf on the USDC ERC20 contract at 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000 returns the same balance in 6 decimals.
Every USDC send, transfer, mint and burn on Arc emits a Transfer log from a system emitter, Arc's implementation of EIP 7708.
A transfer through the ERC20 interface emits a second Transfer log from the token contract.

An indexer that reads both logs without matching on the emitter address double counts every ERC20 interface transfer.

A receipt is the record of a transaction's outcome, including whether it succeeded. Blocklisted USDC transfers on Arc can revert and still land in a block, consuming gas, so check receipt.status before marking a payment as paid. Local EVM simulators such as Foundry's anvil run a standard EVM and can't reproduce this behaviour or EIP 7708 Transfer events. They only show up when you test against a live Arc RPC endpoint.

3. Does the Provider Run Arc Archive Nodes With Tracing?

Archive nodes matter on Arc because a pruned Arc node keeps only about a day and a half of history. An archive node keeps the full history of chain state.

According to the Arc node documentation, the full pruning preset keeps the last 237,600 blocks for most data. At roughly 500 milliseconds per block, that is about 33 hours. Balances and events older than that, such as the figures a month end close needs, have to come from an archive node. Tracing through the debug and trace namespaces matters too, for working out why an Arc payment reverted.

4. How Does the Provider Handle Upgrades on a Pre 1.0 Client?

Upgrade handling matters on Arc because Arc's node software is still pre 1.0. The Arc node documentation already marks one transport for deprecation in v0.8.0 and removal in v0.9.0.

An RPC provider that falls behind on required Arc releases risks nodes that stop syncing while applications keep sending requests. Ask each provider how far ahead of a release it patches its Arc nodes and whether customers hear about upgrades in advance.

5. Can the Provider Show SOC 2 Evidence and Who Owns the Hardware?

Compliance evidence matters on Arc because Arc is built for institutions, and its validators are regulated institutions with compliance obligations of their own. Teams selling into banks or asset managers on Arc should expect vendor risk reviews to ask for a SOC 2 report and for exactly whose hardware serves their RPC requests.

What Does Spectrum Nodes Offer on Arc?

Spectrum Nodes covers Arc for RPC and is listed in Circle's partner directory. Across its platform, Spectrum Nodes serves over a billion requests a day across 200+ chains at 99.999% uptime.

Uptime and infrastructure. Requests route through load balanced clusters with automatic failover if a node becomes unavailable. They run on our own bare metal hardware rather than rented cloud capacity, in Tier III data centers across Europe and North America plus a full bare metal deployment in a rented rack in Singapore. When widespread cloud outages hit in October 2025, Spectrum Nodes reported all of its nodes fully operational. See what happens when an RPC goes down.
Log pricing. Spectrum's published rate card for Ethereum charges eth_getLogs the same 50 credits as eth_blockNumber, so a log heavy reconciliation job costs no more per call than a standard read. Spectrum Nodes plans can be paid in USDC, with automatic credit top ups from a USDC balance.
Upgrades. Our DevOps team patches nodes ahead of each network upgrade and lists upcoming upgrades in the Network Upgrade Calendar, available in the dashboard and as an API, SDK and CLI. When Robinhood Chain launched in July 2026, Spectrum Nodes had endpoints live the next day.
Compliance. Spectrum Nodes is SOC 2 Type II attested and has never had a breach.

Which Spectrum Nodes Setup Fits Which Workload?

Setup	What you get	Suited to
Shared plans	Load balanced endpoints from Free to Enterprise, with caps from 25 requests per second on Free up to 350 on Enterprise, where limits can be raised case by case. Custom plans remove the caps, with unlimited endpoints and throughput	Wallets and consumer payment apps
Dedicated nodes	Offered as part of Spectrum's enterprise services, alongside monitoring dashboards and usage analytics	Payment processors and high volume indexers that don't want to share capacity
Spectrum Engineering	Custom APIs built on blockchain data, including indexed datasets, streams, webhooks and private deployments, built and operated on Spectrum's own infrastructure and scoped per project	Institutions that would rather not build and maintain their own indexing pipeline

Check the chains each plan covers on the supported networks page.

Choosing an Arc RPC Provider

Arc settles a payment in under a second. Whether your application sees that settlement in time depends on the RPC endpoint it reads from. Put the five checks to every provider on your shortlist, Spectrum Nodes included.

FAQ

What should you look for in an Arc RPC provider? Look for Arc nodes that stay close to the chain head, reliable eth_getLogs and receipt access for USDC reconciliation, and archive nodes with tracing. Also ask for a clear process for patching Arc's pre 1.0 node software and a SOC 2 report.

What is Arc's chain ID and RPC URL? Arc mainnet uses chain ID 5042, and Arc's docs list rpc.mainnet.arc.io as its public RPC URL. Arc speaks standard Ethereum JSON RPC over HTTP and WebSocket, so connecting with standard EVM tooling is simple.

How many decimals does USDC use on Arc? USDC on Arc uses 18 decimals on the native interface, which covers gas, native sends and eth_getBalance, and 6 decimals on the ERC20 interface at 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000. Both interfaces read the same underlying balance, so never compare raw values from one with the other without converting.

Why does one USDC transfer on Arc emit two Transfer logs? A USDC transfer made through Arc's ERC20 interface emits one Transfer log from Arc's system emitter, which implements EIP 7708, and a second Transfer log from the USDC token contract. Indexers should match on the emitter address to avoid double counting.

How much history does a pruned Arc node keep? An Arc node on the full pruning preset keeps the last 237,600 blocks for most data, according to the Arc node documentation. At roughly 500 milliseconds per block, that is about a day and a half of history, so older balances and events need an archive node.

Does Spectrum Nodes support Arc? Yes. Spectrum Nodes covers Circle's Arc for RPC and is listed in Circle's partner directory. It runs on its own bare metal hardware, serves over a billion requests a day across 200+ chains at 99.999% uptime and is SOC 2 Type II attested.

References

Talk to our team: https://calendly.com/spectrumnodes-sales/30min