Mid-September marks Fashion Week in New York City. But in many corners of the city last week, it might as well have been Blockchain Week. That included a warehouse north of Tribeca, where an audience of hundreds gathered to watch Circle executives hype the public launch of the company’s Arc chain. The move marked the company’s most ambitious launch in recent memory, and signified an inflection point not just for Circle, but for the crypto industry, which is suddenly locked in a new blockchain war.
Competition among blockchains is nearly as old as Bitcoin itself, of course, but until recently it consisted of different projects, cooked up by colorful characters, vying to attract speculators and retail users. In this universe, Bitcoin remains the undisputed king, while rival chains like Ethereum, XRP, and Solana have notched multi-billion-dollar market caps, and carved out lanes of their own.
