Author: Steve Ngok, Chief Strategy Officer, DoraHacks
introduction
For nearly a decade, the existing financial order has viewed the cryptocurrency industry with skepticism and even disdain. To observers within their ivory towers, the industry is nothing more than a casino, a chaotic and speculative place disconnected from the real economy. For a long time, this criticism has indeed been not without merit.
But by 2026, the early chaos had given way to clear structural opportunities. The industry was not only growing, but also diverging.
We are witnessing a transformation. On one hand, there is continued speculation: prediction markets, exchanges, volatility optimization. It remains a vibrant but noisy arena. But beyond that, a more serious, professional, and efficiency-driven landscape is emerging.
Stablecoins have become the TCP/IP protocol of money. They are devouring the cross-border payment market, eliminating foreign exchange inefficiencies, and empowering AI agents with entirely new economic primitives.
In this new continent, the early DeFi creed of "move fast, break the mold" has been replaced by a demand for certainty, compliance, and institutional-scale. This is why the Circle and Arc ecosystems have become the dominant technology stack. They have built an economic operating system that handles the tedious, core, and often shady "dirty work" of regulatory consolidation and liquidity management for you.
If you're an entrepreneur in 2026, you won't need to reinvent the wheel. DoraHacks and its partners have paved the way. The regulatory moat is in place. Liquidity is unfathomable. The question is no longer whether we can put real-world assets on the blockchain, but what will happen when money becomes programmable like bits?
The secret to entrepreneurship lies here, and now is the perfect time to build.
Direction I: Global Capital Highway
From simple remittances to programmable settlements
1. Core Argument
Traditional cross-border payment systems are trapped in a structural "Blockchain Trilemma": you can have speed, you can have low cost, or you can have regulatory transparency, but you can rarely have all three at the same time. The current model is a relic of the past and is simply incompatible with the speed of the internet economy.
The Circle and Arc ecosystems have finally resolved this coordination challenge:
●CPN (Circle Payments Network): Solves the "last mile" problem by connecting digital ledgers with global banking systems.
●CCTP & Gateway: Solved the problem of liquidity fragmentation and unified assets scattered across different blockchains.
●Arc: Provides a "matching and clearing engine" that delivers the sub-second certainty and low latency required by Wall Street.
Mission: To make Arc the central clearinghouse for global capital and build next-generation business payment applications, thus rendering the SWIFT network obsolete.
2. High-value opportunities
Our vision extends beyond basic payroll payments or merchant transactions. The real opportunity lies in restructuring B2B cash flow and platform economics.
A. Programmable Trade Finance
●Argument: "The funds arrive in the account the moment the goods are delivered."
●Pain Points: International trade operates amidst friction. Exporters need to wait 30-90 days for payment terms or rely on expensive and cumbersome letters of credit. Trust is not only slow but also costly.
●Solution:
○ Custody: Importers lock USDC in a smart contract on Arc.
○Trigger: The oracle transmits real-time logistics data to the blockchain. "Goods received" = "Payment triggered".
○Settlement: USDC will be automatically released from the contract.
○Exit: CPN converts USDC into local currency (such as Vietnamese Dong) and immediately transfers it to the exporter.
●Why choose Arc? Only Arc's sub-second finality and near-zero rates make trigger-based payments based on high-frequency logistics updates economically feasible.
●Builder Profile: Supply Chain ERP Expert and Logistics Data Expert.
B. Internal Finance Engine
●Argument: "Stop burning money on internal wire transfers."
●Pain Point: Multinational corporations like Toyota or Siemens have subsidiaries in 50 countries. When their Brazilian subsidiary owes money to its German subsidiary, and Germany owes money to the United States, they incur significant losses in exchange rate fees and capital tied up in wire transfers.
●Solution:
○On-chain aggregation: Subsidiaries convert local cash into USDC through CPN and aggregate it into the central Arc treasury pool.
○ Netting: Run the "Netting Algorithm" on Arc to calculate who owes whom how much money in the ledger.
○Settlement: You only need to move the difference.
○ Withdrawal: The subsidiary will only convert liquidity back to local fiat currency when necessary.
●Why choose Arc? Privacy tools protect internal financial data, while high throughput handles the complex mathematical calculations of real-time netting.
●Builder Profile: Fintech architect and enterprise SaaS founder.
C. “Web3 version of Stripe Connect”
● Argument: "A universal payment route for the gig economy".
●Pain Point: Platforms like Uber, Airbnb, or Upwork struggle to pay global workers. Sending $50 to a freelancer in the Philippines is often prohibitively expensive.
●Solution:
○ Aggregation: The platform loads a single USDC liquidity pool on Arc.
○Distribution: A single API call can trigger thousands of payments.
○ Routing: The smart contract acts as a router. Crypto native users? Send to their wallets. Traditional users? Routed to their local banks via CPN.
●Why choose Arc? Batch processing capabilities make "micro-payments" possible, which is mathematically impossible in the traditional context.
●Builder Profile: Payment gateway engineers and platform aggregators.
D. Programmable Enterprise Card
●Argument: "Give your AI agent a credit card, but control the spending with code."
●Pain Points: Enterprises need to procure software globally, but enterprise cards are cumbersome. They lack granular control, and you can't easily hand them over to AI agents or temporary contractors.
●Solution:
○ Funds Pool: Corporate USDC treasury on Arc.
○Card: Instantly issue virtual Visa/Mastercard credentials via CPN.
○ Rule: Embed logic in the smart contract: "This card is only valid for AWS" or "Maximum daily spending of $100".
○Settlement: Transactions are settled instantly on-chain via StableFX.
●Why choose Arc? It shifts financial control from the bank's policy department to the company's codebase.
●Builder Profile: Fee Management and B2B Fintech Team.
3. Technology Blueprint
For developers, the architecture is now standardized. The construction method is as follows:
1. Deposit: A virtual IBAN is generated using the CPN API . Fiat currency flows in; USDC is automatically minted into the Arc address.
2. Liquidity: Use the Gateway SDK to aggregate USDC from decentralized chains (Ethereum, Solana) into your central Arc application.
3. Business Logic: Deploy your Solidity contract on Arc.
○Salary: distributeSalary(recipients, amounts)
○Trade: release funds (proof of shipping)
4. Withdrawal: Call the CPN Payout API to destroy USDC and trigger a local bank wire transfer, or use Programmable Wallets to settle directly on-chain.
4. Conclusion
"Build a bank that runs on code."
Recognize your opponent: You are competing with the friction of the banking system of the 1970s.
By combining Arc's speed with CPN's coverage, you can reduce global settlement costs by 80% and speed up the process from "T+2 days" to "T+0 seconds." This is a ticket to a multi-trillion dollar market.
Direction II: On-Chain Forex Revolution
From manual exchange to algorithmic liquidity networks
1. Core Argument
The traditional foreign exchange (FX) market is the world's largest financial market, but it is currently constrained by the outdated "three elements of inefficiency": settlement delays (T+2 standard), gatekeeper mechanisms (only giants can get the best exchange rates), and opacity (layers of hidden fees).
The combination of Circle and Arc breaks down this structure:
● StableFX offers institutional-grade pricing information (RFQ mechanism), meaning "inquiry equals execution".
● Partner stablecoins (such as MXNB, JPYC, BRLA) provide the necessary local currency peg.
● Arc provides the execution environment that allows these currencies to be exchanged within milliseconds.
Mission: To autonomously manage currency risk through code and eliminate exchange rate frictions in cross-border commerce.
2. High-value opportunities
We're looking at more than just simple hedging or remittance applications. The real opportunity lies in deep financial engineering applied to global trade.
A. Independent multi-currency treasury system
●Argument: "To popularize Apple's financial capabilities among small and medium-sized enterprises."
●Pain Point: A mid-sized cross-border e-commerce company earns Euros (EUR), pays server costs in US Dollars (USD), and pays salaries in Japanese Yen (JPY). Traditional banks charge high spreads for these exchanges, and the finance team often misses optimal processing windows due to manual handling.
●Solution:
○Automatic Strategy: Enterprises set a rule on Arc: "If the EURC balance > 50,000 and the EUR/USD exchange rate > 1.08, automatically convert 50% into USDC."
○ Instant Execution: The smart contract monitors StableFX quotes through an oracle and executes immediately when the conditions are met.
Salary: At the end of the month, USDC will be automatically converted to JPYC at the best market exchange rate and distributed to employees' wallets.
●Why choose Arc? Only Arc supports this level of high-frequency monitoring and low-cost execution. Traditional banks cannot provide this level of programmability.
●Builder Profile: Enterprise financial SaaS teams and ERP integrators.
B. "1 inch" in the foreign exchange field
● Argument: "Globally optimal execution in real time".
●Pain Point: When converting USDC to EURC, the prices differ between Uniswap, StableFX, and Curve. Users rarely know which platform offers the best liquidity.
●Solution:
○ Aggregation: Build a dApp on Arc that connects StableFX (RFQ mode) with an on-chain AMM.
○ Routing: When a user wants to exchange $1 million, the algorithm splits the order: 60% through StableFX (good depth) and 40% through AMM.
Atomic settlement: The user clicks once. Complexity is abstracted.
●Why choose Arc? Its high performance allows you to query multiple liquidity sources and execute transactions within a single block.
●Builder Profile: DeFi Developers and Market Makers.
C. Tokenized Arbitrage Trading Protocol
●Argument: "Bringing Wall Street's oldest strategy into the DeFi arena."
●Pain Point: Carry Trade – borrowing low-interest currencies to invest in high-interest currencies – has historically been the exclusive domain of hedge funds and banks.
●Solution:
○Mechanism: Users deposit USDC.
○ Operation: The protocol borrows low-interest currencies (such as JPYC) in the background, exchanges them through StableFX, and invests them in high-yield assets (such as tokenized government bonds).
○ Risk Control: Utilizing Arc's automation capabilities, the system performs millisecond-level settlement if the exchange rate reaches a volatility threshold.
●Why choose Arc? This strategy requires extremely high speed. Arc's deterministic finality is a key guarantee against liquidation failures.
●Builder Profile: Quantitative trading team and senior DeFi architect.
D. "Local Priority" Checkout Counter
● Argument: "Pay in pesos, settle in dollars. Zero friction."
● Pain Point: A US Shopify merchant wants USDC, but their Mexican customer wants to pay in pesos (MXN). Current credit card payment gateways charge a 3-5% exchange rate fee for this.
● Solution:
○ Front end: Buyers see the price of MXNB (Mexican Peso stablecoin).
○ Payment: The buyer pays MXNB.
○ Backend: The transaction reaches Arc, and MXNB is instantly converted to USDC via StableFX.
○ Settlement: Merchant receives USDC. No bank is involved. Total fees < 1%.
● Why choose Arc? Instant confirmation makes the checkout experience silky smooth, without the need to "wait for block confirmation".
● Builder Profile: Payment gateway developers and e-commerce infrastructure teams.
3. Technology Blueprint
For developers, the integration path is clear and straightforward:
- Pricing: Integrates with StableFX API (Oracle) . This is a data stream that can execute quotes.
- Assets: Ensure your smart contracts are compatible with the ERC-20 standard for USDC, EURC, and partner stablecoins (JPYC, MXNB).
- Execution: Construct a `swapCurrency(tokenIn, tokenOut, amount, minRate)` function. Internally, it calls the StableFX settlement contract, passing a signed RFQ quote to complete the atomic swap.
- Interoperability (optional): Use the xReserve mode. If your strategy requires assets from the Bitcoin network, wrap them in the Arc ecosystem via xReserve to obtain forex liquidity.
4. Conclusion
"Foreign exchange is the world's largest market, but it still operates on technology from the 1980s."
On this track, you are reshaping the vascular system of global trade.
With StableFX and Arc, you have the opportunity to build next-generation forex applications: operating 24/7, T+0 settlement, and zero bank fees. This is the crown jewel of fintech.
Direction III: Silicon-based Economy
From human-computer interaction to machine-to-machine commerce (M2M commerce)
1. Core Argument
The current generation of artificial intelligence presents a structural paradox: limitless intelligence coupled with zero financial autonomy. An AI agent can plan complex travel itineraries to Tokyo but has no authority to book flights. It can write server code but cannot lease hardware. It is a "brain in a vat," brimming with talent yet disconnected from the real economy.
The Circle and Arc ecosystems provided this missing limb:
● Circle Programmable Wallets: Grant each agent a unique, policy-controlled on-chain identity.
● x402 Protocol: A universal "negotiation language" for value (recovering the Web's "402 Payment Required" status code).
● Gas Station: Resolves UX friction, abstracts away the complexities of ETH and Gas, and makes payments feel like a simple API call.
● Arc: Provides the high-concurrency, deterministic environment required for machine-speed transactions.
Mission: To build the infrastructure and applications that allow AI to autonomously earn, consume, and manage assets. To empower the machine economy with sovereignty.
2. High-value opportunities
We're looking for more than just a simple "Crypto browser." We're looking for the foundational track of machine-native GDP.
A. The API Negotiator
● Argument: "The demise of monthly subscription models; the birth of real-time bidding."
● Pain Point: Developers are currently forced to manually subscribe to dozens of APIs (OpenAI, Twilio, SerpApi), managing a mess of keys and credit card limits.
● Solution:
○ Dynamic Gateway: Service providers publish APIs with dynamic, load-based pricing on Arc.
○ Proxy: Before retrieving data, the user's AI proxy asks via x402: "How much does it cost?"
○ Settlement: The provider responded: "0.002 USDC." The agent verified its budget and executed the payment immediately.
○ Pay-as-you-go: No subscription. No waste. Millisecond-level billing.
● Why choose Arc? High-frequency micropayments are economically impossible on the traditional track. On Arc, they are the standard.
● Builder Profile: API aggregator and developer tool architect.
B. Context-Based Payment Gateway
● Argument: "Solving the legal deadlock in the 'New York Times vs. OpenAI' debate."
● Pain Points: Large Language Models (LLMs) require fresh data, but publishers are blocking web crawlers because they are not being paid. The legal system is at a standstill.
● Solution:
○ Compliance: Publishers deploy x402 headers on their content.
○ Micro-access: When the AI crawler accesses the site, it does not hit the paywall; it autonomously pays 0.01 USDC to the publisher's Arc wallet to obtain the legal right to access that specific article.
○ Revenue Stream: Funds flow instantly to creators and the platform, building a sustainable "AI-media" ecosystem.
● Why choose Arc? Extremely low transaction fees make the “1-cent economy” feasible.
● Builder Profile: Media technology companies and Web3 browser plugin developers.
C. "Budgeted Housekeeping" Agreement
● Argument: "Trust the code, not the faith."
● Pain Point: You want your AI to help you buy coffee and book flights, but you would never hand your credit card to a chatbot that might be hallucinating.
● Solution:
○ Scope permissions: Utilize the "Policy Engine" of Circle Programmable Wallets.
○ Rules: Issue a sub-wallet to the AI with strict on-chain logic: "Daily maximum spending of 50 USDC", "Transfers only to whitelisted addresses (Starbucks, Uber)", "Transactions exceeding $100 require human biometric approval".
○ Autonomy: Within these barriers, AI has complete freedom.
● Why choose Arc? On-chain strategy execution is transparent and immutable, providing flexibility that traditional bank risk control models cannot match.
● Builder Profile: Developers of smart home hubs and personal assistant applications.
D. RLHF Lightning Bounty
● Argument: "Reverse Turing Test".
● Pain Point: The AI still gets stuck. It can't read ambiguous CAPTCHAs or misunderstand subtle irony.
● Solution:
○ Request: The AI agent packages the difficult task as a “micro-bounty” and broadcasts it to Arc with a reward of 0.5 USDC.
○ Humans: “Micro-workers” around the world click on notifications to solve CAPTCHAs or label data.
○ Payment: AI verifies input and releases funds immediately.
● Why choose Arc? It creates a frictionless global labor market settled in USDC.
● Builder profile: Data labeling platforms and crowdsourcing networks.
3. Technology Blueprint
For engineers, the assembly instructions for building a silicon-based economic entity are as follows:
1. Identity: Instantiate a smart contract account (SCA) for the AI using the Circle Programmable Wallets API .
○ Key point: Configure spending strategy (e.g., maxAmountPerDay = 10 USDC).
2. Protocol: Integrates the x402 (HTTP 402) standard. When the AI makes a request, the server returns a 402 Payment Required response along with the target address and amount. The AI parses this information and signs the transaction.
3. Gas: Configure Gas Station and Paymaster . AI only holds USDC. Paymaster abstracts away gas fees in the background, ensuring that AI's logic loop will never be interrupted due to the lack of native tokens.
4. Logic: Deploy the verification contract on Arc. Ensure that successful payments trigger an oracle or event listener, thereby releasing API keys or service access off-chain.
4. Conclusion
“Give your AI a wallet, not just a prompt.”
Currently, your AI is like a genius locked in a library: it knows everything, but it has no impact on the physical world.
By combining Arc's speed with Circle Wallet's identity layer, you're handing a key to that genius. You're building the GDP of the machine economy.
Direction IV: Economic Leapfrog Development and Inclusive Finance
From "waiting for aid" to "accessing the global network"
1. Core Argument
The failure of traditional financial inclusion did not stem from malice, but from mathematics. The unit economics of the traditional banking system were bankrupt: the customer acquisition cost and service management fees for opening an account for a user in a developing market far exceeded the profits generated by the deposits. Banks simply could not afford to open a $50 account.
The Circle and Arc ecosystems fundamentally change this equation:
● Arc's minimal gas fees make a $1 transfer economically rational, not just charitable.
● Circle User-Controlled Wallets solve the "key management" hurdle by replacing the dreaded seed phrase with familiar social logins and passkeys.
● The USDC addresses the issue of “volatility” and protects vulnerable groups from the effects of inflation in their own currency.
Mission: To build a "Leapfrog Stack" to create minimalist, inflation-resistant, and disintermediation-free financial instruments to serve the bottom 50% of the world's population.
2. High-value opportunities
We're talking about building a sustainable, scalable business model for the next billion users.
A. Reputation-based microloans
● Argument: "Digitize the social capital of villages to access global mobility."
● Pain Point: A fruit vendor in Kenya needs $100 to buy goods. Lacking a credit score, she is forced to accept predatory loans. Meanwhile, DeFi protocols sit idle with billions of dollars in idle funds, unable to be deployed without over-collateralization.
● Solution:
○ ROSCA 2.0: Moves the traditional "rotating savings and credit association" (i.e., rotating credit association) to Arc.
○ SBT: If a member repays on time, this act will be minted as a Soul-Bound Token, i.e., a digital credit score.
○ Bridge: Highly reputable ROSCA groups are bundled together to borrow from global DeFi pools at competitive rates (such as 10%), bypassing local loan sharks (100%+).
● Why choose Arc? Only Arc can handle massive amounts of micro-repayment data while providing the transparent audit trails required by lenders worldwide.
● Builder Profile: Emerging market fintech founder and DeFi protocol architect.
B. Pay-As-You-Go Asset Networks
● Argument: "Provide liquid funds for liquid use rights."
● Pain point: A low-income family cannot afford the upfront costs of solar panels or a motorcycle, even though they have a stable cash flow to pay in installments.
● Solution:
○ IoT + Blockchain: Connecting physical assets (solar panels) to an internet controller.
○ Micro Unlock: Users pay 0.50 USDC via Arc Wallet.
○ Smart contract logic: Payment confirmation -> Send signal -> Device unlocks for 24 hours.
○ Ownership: If payments cease, the device is locked. Once the principal is paid in full, the NFT represents a complete transfer of ownership.
● Why choose Arc? The friction of traditional payments makes daily micro-payments impossible. Arc makes it effortless.
● Builder Profile: IoT hardware geeks and ReFi (Regenerative Finance) entrepreneurs.
C. Programmable Assistance Protocol
● Argument: "Ensure that donated funds are used to buy medicine, not alcohol."
● Pain Points: Humanitarian aid is plagued by two major problems: corruption among middlemen (layer upon layer of exploitation) and misuse of funds at the grassroots level.
● Solution:
○ Restricted Assets: A “packaged version of USDC” will be issued on Arc specifically for aid purposes.
○ Whitelist: Write token code that allows transfers only to whitelisted wallets (verified pharmacies, schools, and grocery stores).
○ Automatic redemption: Suppliers who receive tokens can instantly redeem them 1:1 for liquid USDC.
○ Privacy: Using zero-knowledge proofs, the public can see the flow of funds to the valid categories without revealing the refugee's identity.
● Why choose Arc? Programmable money is the ultimate solution to the principal-agent problem in philanthropy.
● Builder Profile: Government Technology (GovTech) developers and NGO technology partners.
D. Remittance via direct billing
● Argument: "Don't send cash; settle the bill."
● Pain Point: Migrant workers send money home to pay for school fees. The cash is received, but due to urgent needs or lack of self-discipline, the money is spent elsewhere. Remitters want to control how the funds are used.
● Solution:
○ Aggregation: The platform integrates with utility and education providers in the destination country.
○ Direct payment: Remitters in the United States pay USDC within the application.
○ Settlement: Arc settles transactions in the background, converts them to local fiat currency through CPN, and pays them directly to the power company.
Certainty: The remitter receives an instant digital receipt: "Bill paid."
● Why choose Arc? It acts as a global settlement layer, bypassing the slow and opaque correspondent banking chain.
● Builder Profile: Cross-border payment startups and digital nomad service providers.
3. Technology Blueprint
In this arena, user experience (UX) is survival. Your users are using low-end devices and unstable networks.
- Stealth Wallet: Use Circle user control with PIN or biometric recovery capabilities. If you make the user copy 12 words, you've already lost.
- Gas Sponsorship: You must configure the Gas Station . Users should know they received "$10," not that they need "Arc Tokens" to pay for gas. Completely abstract away the blockchain.
- Lightweight technology stack: Build Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) or Telegram apps. The installation package must be small; the interface must be fast.
- Offline tolerance: Designed for latency. Allows users to sign transactions offline and broadcast them when the network reconnects.
4. Conclusion
"Technology has no conscience, but builders do."
On Wall Street, a 1-millisecond faster payment might mean an extra million dollars in profit. But in the developing world, saving 1 dollar and making an instant transfer means a family can have a full meal tonight.
This track is about eliminating the "poverty premium" with code. By leveraging the power of Arc and Circle, you are building a ladder to economic freedom.
Conclusion
Construction is timely
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. In the late 1990s, we laid fiber optic cables, enabling the internet to scale. In the 2000s, Stripe and PayPal built the logic layer, facilitating the explosion of e-commerce. Today, we stand at a similar turning point in the financial internet.
These opportunities—borderless payments, programmable foreign exchange, the machine economy, and financial inclusion—are not theoretical science projects. They are imminent, accessible markets worth trillions of dollars.
Friction in the traditional banking system—three-day settlement times, exorbitant remittance fees, walled gardens—is anomalies that technology is correcting.
Circle and Arc provide the "AWS" for this financial revolution: scalable, compliant, and readily deployable. Infrastructure risks have been eliminated. Only execution risks remain.
The founders we're looking for aren't those who want to launch the next Meme coin, but those who are obsessed with dismantling banks, reconnecting global trade, and giving AI agents economic sovereignty.
The economic operating system is now open, the API is online, and it's the perfect time to build it.
About DoraHacks
DoraHacks is a leading global hackathon community and open-source developer incentive platform. DoraHacks provides toolkits to empower people to organize hackathons and fund early-stage ecosystem startups.
DoraHacks is dedicated to driving a global hackathon in Web3, AI, quantum computing, and space technology. To date, over 30,000 startups have received more than $300 million in funding through the DoraHacks community. Numerous open-source communities, enterprises, and technology ecosystems are actively leveraging DoraHacks and its BUIDL AI capabilities to organize hackathons and fund open-source initiatives.
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