Circle Developer Grants (Arc)

Circle Developer Grants pay teams in USDC to build on Arc, Circle's stablecoin-native Layer 1 where USDC is the gas token, and on the Circle Developer Platform. It is one of the cleanest ways to get paid in dollars for shipping a real stablecoin product.

As of October 2026: the program is taking applications through its grants portal with no deadline listed, and Circle has published its first grant cohort of 2026. Arc's public mainnet launched on September 16, 2026, so you are building on a live chain, not a testnet. The Arc hackathons this page mentioned before, including January's Agentic Commerce on Arc event, are over.

What does Circle pay?

Tiered USDC funding tied to meaningful integrations and ecosystem impact. Circle's grant page no longer publishes a range; earlier listings quoted up to $100,000 in USDC. Milestones are agreed at acceptance and money is released as each one is met, and once you finish your final milestones you can apply for more. On top of the cash: technical guidance, mentorship, co-marketing such as blog features, and access to Circle teams and partners.

What does Circle want?

Products on Arc that use Circle tools like USDC, Wallets, CCTP, Nanopayments and Gateway. The focus areas are agentic economic activity, stablecoin FX, peer-to-peer payments, treasury management, prediction markets, and lending and borrowing.

My take: "On Arc, the grant and the airdrop point the same way." Circle's ARC token design sets 60% of supply aside for the ecosystem and names developer grants in that share. No ARC airdrop is announced, but a funded builder is the strongest position on the chain.

The honest catch

Review has two stages (an initial review, then a finalist technical review), and finalists must pass screenings. Milestone funding means you are paid for delivery, not for the pitch. Apply with an integration plan you can actually ship.

Stack it

Read our Arc airdrop entry for the user side, and Developer airdrops and grants for the builder logic. Deployr already deploys to Arc: ship your contract here .