Uniswap expands liquidity layer to Arc network

Uniswap is bringing its entire trading stack to Arc, the Layer-1 blockchain built by Circle to serve as a dedicated settlement layer for stablecoins. The deployment includes Uniswap’s v4 automated market maker, liquidity pools, swap routing, and a full developer SDK and API, essentially giving Arc a turnkey DeFi backbone from day one.

The integration was first announced on June 15, 2026, with infrastructure going live alongside Arc’s public mainnet launch on September 16, 2026. For a blockchain whose entire thesis is “stablecoins, but better,” landing the protocol responsible for $4.4 trillion in all-time trading volume is a strong opening move.

What Arc is building and why Uniswap matters

Arc is Circle’s answer to a question the industry has been circling (no pun intended) for years: what if a blockchain was designed from the ground up to optimize stablecoin transactions? Rather than treating stablecoins as just another token on a general-purpose chain, Arc makes them the native asset class, supporting direct 1:1 swaps between major stablecoins like USDC, USDS, and DAI.

Circle laid the groundwork in late 2025, launching a public testnet in October of that year. Over 100 partners participated in that testnet phase, including heavyweights like Curve and Aave, two protocols that know a thing or two about stablecoin liquidity.

The v4 advantage

Uniswap’s v4 release introduced “hooks,” a modular system that lets developers customize pool behavior without forking the entire protocol. With v4 hooks, developers on Arc can build pools with custom fee structures, oracle integrations, or compliance layers tailored to institutional settlement.

The developer SDK and API deployment also signals that Uniswap isn’t just dropping liquidity pools and walking away. By giving Arc developers programmatic access to Uniswap’s routing engine, the protocol is positioning itself as core infrastructure, not a standalone app sitting on top of the chain.

Stablecoin settlement as a growth thesis

Uniswap’s presence makes Arc’s pitch considerably more credible. Minimal slippage on stablecoin pairs isn’t just a nice feature for traders, it’s a requirement for any platform hoping to handle institutional-scale capital flows.

Curve, which also participated in Arc’s testnet, has long been the dominant protocol for stablecoin swaps. Having both Curve and Uniswap building on the same stablecoin-native chain creates an interesting dynamic where they’ll either compete fiercely on spreads or find complementary niches within Arc’s ecosystem.

With Uniswap’s infrastructure live from launch, Arc at least won’t have the cold-start liquidity problem that has killed countless Layer-1 ambitions before they got off the ground.

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