Reading Paths: Four Routes Through Arc's Documentation
Four curated routes through this site: domain understanding, system architecture, real-world scenarios, or interview prep. Pick the one that fits your goal.
Orientation · pick oneThis site has about forty pages across four tabs. Reading it front to back works, but most people want one of these four routes.
The domain
The system
IRL Scenarios
Interview prep
~50 minutes · no codeYou want to understand how stablecoin cross-border payments work, well enough to evaluate a claim about them. This path never opens a source file.
1
Why corridors cost so much
Correspondent banking, pre-funding, and where the 8.78% actually goes. Read →
2
How stablecoins work
Issuance, redemption, reserves, and the difference between a peg and a promise. Read →
3
Settlement and finality
Why “instant” is a marketing word and finality is a probability curve. Read →
~40 minutes · start anywhereSeven narratives. Each opens on a symptom, walks the diagnosis, and lands on the specific piece of Arc that prevents it. They are self-contained and can be read in any order, but if you read only one:
The journal that balanced and lied
A mutation that broke the audit trail and passed all sixteen tests. The best argument on this site for why balance is necessary but not sufficient.
A concrete failure narrative beats an abstract answer in every interview. The IRL scenarios are there to be retold.
The strongest answers on this site are the ones about what didn’t work: the mutation that passed, the boundary rule that didn’t fire. Interviewers remember those.
A teal block is a load-bearing claim the code enforces: there is a test or a database
constraint behind it.
An amber block is a known gap: something modelled but not wired, or a limitation accepted on
purpose. These are stated rather than hidden.
Account codes appear as structured strings, asset.float.bank.EUR, liability.customer.va_1.KES: because a journal should be legible in a log or a psql session without joining anything.All monetary figures are integer minor units. 10000n is €100.00. There are no floats anywhere near money, and there is a lint rule that makes sure.
