Uniswap emerged as the leading decentralized exchange in one launch-day analysis of Circle’s Arc network, processing approximately $160 million across its V2, V3 and V4 deployments. CertiK’s dataset placed Uniswap at roughly 86% of the $187 million in DEX volume it tracked during Arc’s opening period, giving the protocol an early lead among the venues included in that measurement.
According to CertiK Skynet’s Arc launch-day breakdown, Minara followed with around $17 million, while o1_exchange and DYORSWAPDEX recorded approximately $3.9 million and $1.5 million, respectively. The figures establish Uniswap as the dominant venue within CertiK’s tracked sample, but they should not be treated as a complete accounting of every trade conducted across Arc on September 16.
Arc mainnet first day DEX volume hit $187M!
Top venues by volume:@Uniswap captured 86% ($160M across V2/V3/V4). @minara at $17M, @o1_exchange at $3.9M, @DYORSWAPDEX at $1.5M.
Read our latest @arc article 👇 https://t.co/pAltMljB8N pic.twitter.com/s4WeVxz11q
— CertiK Skynet (@CertiKCommunity) September 17, 2026
Uniswap’s presence was confirmed independently by Uniswap Labs, which launched V2, V3, V4 and UniswapX on Arc alongside support through its Web App, Wallet and API. The protocol was operational from Arc’s first public-mainnet block rather than being only a planned integration. Uniswap Labs also describes itself as a preferred DEX on the new network.
Launchpad Tokens Dominate a Broader Volume Dataset
A separate analysis of Dune data paints a wider picture of Arc’s opening session. That dataset recorded approximately $410.8 million in first-day DEX volume and 7.76 million transactions on September 16. Launchpad-linked tokens represented about $336.26 million, or 82%, of that broader trading total, indicating that much of the network’s initial activity centered on newly created speculative assets rather than institutional financial products.
Arguspad accounted for approximately $202.35 million of launchpad-linked trading in that analysis, followed by Minara.fun at $36.41 million and Tollylabs at $19.65 million. Arguspad was also associated with 83,751 of the 97,025 tokens created during the period. Those figures describe activity tied to launchpads and their tokens, not necessarily volume executed exclusively through proprietary launchpad exchanges, so they can overlap with trades routed through venues such as Uniswap.
That methodological distinction also explains why the $410.8 million Dune-based total cannot simply be reconciled with CertiK’s $187 million figure. Different indexers can classify contracts, routers, launchpads and trading venues differently while also using different observation windows. The safest conclusion is that Arc saw substantial launch-day trading and that Uniswap led CertiK’s measured DEX cohort, rather than treating either dataset as an unquestioned network-wide denominator.
Arc’s First-Day Activity Skews Toward Retail Trading
The composition of that trading contrasts with Arc’s institutional positioning. Circle launched the network with founding validators including BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa and Worldpay, alongside more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders. Arc’s infrastructure is targeted at financial markets and stablecoin settlement, but its first-day trading mix shows that permissionless retail activity can develop independently of that institutional roadmap.
Circle also listed Uniswap, Robinhood, Pump.fun, Aero, o1.exchange and other platforms among Arc’s trading and liquidity ecosystem at launch. The company said those participants collectively support areas including spot trading, structured products, perpetuals and cross-chain execution. That announcement does not establish that every named platform individually operates both spot and perpetual markets on Arc, so the products should not be attributed uniformly across all venues.
The next useful measure will be whether launch-day activity persists once the initial token-creation cycle cools. Sustained DEX volume, liquidity depth, stablecoin trading and activity around Arc’s institutional products will provide a clearer picture of the network’s economic composition than a single high-volume opening session. For Uniswap specifically, maintaining its share across subsequent days would provide stronger evidence of durable venue leadership than its position within the first-day snapshot alone.