Raw USDC volume on Arc had its biggest week since launch; real volume fell 10%

Raw counts every Transfer event the token contract emits, mints and burns included. Real keeps the largest transfer per transaction, per token, so routing hops and contract internals are not counted twice, and leaves mints and burns out. Adjusted is real volume minus transfers where both ends are infrastructure. Mints and burns account for 94% of raw volume's rise; without them, raw volume rose 5.0%, and real volume fell.

An address that sent more than 1,000 transfers or $10M in 30 days, or more than that monthly rate over a longer sent history, is infrastructure. The flag set is recomputed every minute, and each minute's adjusted volume uses the set of that minute. Its cap played no part: on 6 November the set held between 229 and 256 addresses from one minute to the next, every qualifying address flagged, against a cap of 20,000.

One caveat on the comparison. Sent history starts on 27 September, so until 27 October an address active before then was judged on less than a month of sending, which flags fewer addresses and puts adjusted volume above where it settles. That covers the previous week's first four days: judged on a full month, they would have counted somewhat less, and the fall would be that much smaller. The fall does not come from them, though: they averaged 31.6M of adjusted volume a day, below this week's 38.1M, while 28 and 29 October averaged 91.5M. Definitions and thresholds: methodology.

A CCTP or Gateway mint is not issuance: the same dollars changed chains. The two cross-chain routes pulled in opposite directions, as the week before (CCTP +418.1M, Gateway −352.1M), and netted +80.1M.

Organic issuance — USDC created or destroyed on Arc itself, once both routes are taken out — netted +33.9M: 30% of the week's growth, against 74% (+186.7M) the week before. Gross, 1,348.0M was created and 1,314.1M destroyed, the most on both sides in any seven complete UTC days since launch and 70% of the week's mints and burns. How each mint and burn is attributed to a route: methodology, under Bridged liquidity vs. issuance and Cross-chain transfers (CCTP).

Over the week, supply went from 1,073.2M to 1,187.2M: +113.9M, less than half the previous week's +252.8M. Its highest close was 1,194.2M, on 4 November: the highest end-of-day supply since launch, above the 1,092.6M of 28 October.

Each figure is totalSupply() on the USDC contract 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000, read at the stated block: the last block before midnight UTC. On each day of the week, the change in totalSupply() equals the index's mints minus burns, to the dollar.

Flows and volumes, in daily UTC buckets (free key on /docs):

GET /v1/stablecoins/history?token=USDC&range=all

Each bucket carries volume, rvolume, avolume, cnt, mint and burn; the CCTP and Gateway parts are cmint/cburn and bmint/bburn. Organic issuance is mint − cmint − bmint against burn − cburn − bburn; raw volume without mints and burns is volume − mint − burn. The same series is served without a key by the stablecoin_history tool of the MCP connector at https://stabledesk.xyz/mcp, with token USDC and range all.

Supply needs no key: call totalSupply() on the USDC contract at the blocks above, on an Arc mainnet RPC that keeps historical state. End-of-day supply on any other day since launch follows from one of those reads and the same series: subtract each later day's mint − burn.