Robinhood Chain Revenue Boosts Arbitrum Despite Unlock Risks

Robinhood Chain has generated about $37.56 million in fees since its mainnet launch in early July, according to arbdata. Under its agreement with Arbitrum, 10% of net protocol revenue is returned to the Arbitrum ecosystem, implying about $3.75 million in revenue sharing so far. The figures have increased attention on Arbitrum’s value-capture model. Robinhood Chain generated about $2.9 million in fees over the latest 24-hour period, potentially sending around $290,000 to Arbitrum. Arbitrum’s own network fees were about $12,000 during the same period and approximately $3.87 million for the year, according to DeFiLlama. The revenue outlook helped ARB gain more than 135% in 30 days. However, the shared income currently goes mainly to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and Developer Guild. It is not being used for direct ARB buybacks or burns. ARB also faces dilution risk. About 92.65 million ARB, worth roughly $17.1 million at the reported price, is scheduled for release on 16 September. Investor and team unlocks are expected to be largely completed by March 2027. Robinhood Chain’s fees have also drawn criticism. Average transaction costs reportedly reached about $0.40, more than 100 times Solana’s cost. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko argued that applications should monetise through products rather than high infrastructure fees. Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder defended the application-specific layer-2 model, which allows Robinhood to retain about 90% of gas revenue and control sequencing economics. For traders, Robinhood Chain is a bullish revenue catalyst for ARB, but activity after gas subsidies, user costs, token dilution and the lack of direct value return remain key risks.