Arbitrum's ARB token jumped more than 30% in a day after Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 built on Arbitrum's technology, posted record revenue. The Arbitrum DAO takes a cut of that revenue, but the payments go to the treasury, not to token holders.
ARB, Arbitrum's native token, rose more than 30% over the past 24 hours to around 11 cents, breaking out of the 7-10 cent range it had held since June.
Robinhood Chain revenue hits a new high
The rally followed a surge in activity on Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 that trading platform Robinhood launched on July 1 using Arbitrum's technology stack. Robinhood Chain generated $1.92 million in revenue over the past 24 hours, according to DefiLlama — more than any other blockchain, ahead of Canton at $1.76 million, Tron at $974,039, Base at $98,416 and Ethereum at $75,004. That single day accounted for roughly a third of the $5.92 million the chain has generated over 30 days, with more than two-thirds of that total arriving in the past week alone.
Arbitrum's cut of the chain's profit
Under the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains built on the Arbitrum stack that settle to a parent chain other than Arbitrum One or Nova pay 10% of chain profit, with 8% going to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2% to a protocol developer guild. The Arbitrum DAO received $175,612 over the past 24 hours, $363,153 over seven days and $531,641 over 30 days, DefiLlama data show.
According to CoinDesk: "Arbitrum's cut is a true percentage-of-revenue license," ARK Invest analyst Lorenzo Valente wrote in a post on X.
Price tracks onchain activity, but holders see no direct payout
ARB saw $618 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours, an eightfold increase over the previous day. Order books have thickened alongside the move: across the 40 largest venues, roughly $6.2 million sits within 2% of the current price on the buy side and $7.4 million on the sell side, according to CoinMarketCap, though almost a third of that depth is concentrated on a single exchange, BTCC.
The token bottomed near 7.3 cents around Aug. 18, then rallied to roughly 10.5 cents in the final week of August as Robinhood Chain's daily revenue climbed off its lows, faded back to about 8.5 cents, then broke the range top this week as revenue hit records. Trading volumes on the chain reached $6.92 billion across the week, an 89.47% gain, according to DefiLlama.
Even so, the cash flow and the price move remain different in scale. ARB carries a market cap of about $746 million, having added roughly $170 million over the past day, against a revenue share that has delivered $531,641 to the Arbitrum treasury over the past month.
Arbitrum's documentation describes the payments as going into the treasury and the developer guild, not as distributions to token holders. Turning that income into ARB value would require a governance vote, and none has been proposed. Even after the jump, ARB remains below 13.1 cents and well short of its recent peak in May.
Source: CoinDesk
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