一周涨近20%：Arbitrum的「收租」生意，因Robinhood Chain一夜盘活

Original Author: angelilu, Foresight News

ARB briefly touched $0.094 during trading today, surging nearly 20% over the past week, making it one of the strongest-performing mainstream L2 tokens in that period.

The catalyst driving this rally was the launch of the "Robinhood Chain" — an RWA (Real World Assets) Layer 2 built by Robinhood on Arbitrum technology, which officially went live on mainnet during a London press event on July 1.

The more subtle logic behind the move is a long-standing rule, dormant for a year and a half, being brought back into the spotlight: a portion of Robinhood Chain's revenue will automatically flow back to the Arbitrum ecosystem, with a significant chunk going directly into the ArbitrumDAO treasury. This isn't a new policy, but rather a previously lukewarm revenue-sharing mechanism that, thanks to the entry of a heavyweight TradFi player like Robinhood, is being priced in by the market for the first time.

First Major Tenant in a Year and a Half

This rule is called the Arbitrum Expansion Program (AEP), launched in January 2024 by the Arbitrum Foundation in collaboration with Offchain Labs. In simple terms, it allows projects to build custom chains using Arbitrum's technology, with a revenue-sharing condition.

The logic is straightforward: any independent chain built with Arbitrum Orbit technology that does not settle on Arbitrum One/Nova (e.g., settling directly to Ethereum or Base) must contribute 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem — 8% to the DAO treasury and 2% to the Developer Guild. However, L3s that do settle back on Arbitrum One/Nova, such as Xai or Sanko, are exempt from this fee and retain their status as primary ecosystem members.

The key point is that Robinhood Chain is not the first chain to trigger the AEP. Smaller chains settling on Base, like Degen Chain, Onyx, and Flynet, have been paying this share for a while, but their volumes were too small to attract attention. Robinhood Chain is different simply because it's the first heavyweight chain to give the revenue-sharing amount a sense of scale.

The Numbers Look Good, But the Rental Base is Still Tiny

According to the latest data disclosed by Johann, Robinhood's Head of International and Crypto Business, as of July 10, just over a week after its launch, Robinhood Chain has processed over 17 million transactions, attracted over 350,000 addresses, reached a TVL of approximately $250 million, and handled over $1 billion in DEX trading volume. For a newly launched chain, this is indeed an impressive report card.

But the rental base is far smaller. According to Dune data, as of writing, Robinhood Chain's current protocol revenue is about $147,000. After deducting the cost of settling data back to Ethereum L1, it stands at just $146,000. Even if 10% were paid to the Arbitrum DAO, the amount would be negligible. ARB's recent rally reflects the market's premium valuation on the future scalability boundaries of the AEP protocol — a classic narrative-driven market move.

Looking at the potential scale, the ceiling for AEP is indeed high: Robinhood's platform holds approximately $324 billion in total assets and $143.6 billion in assets under custody. Its tokenized stock offerings have already expanded to over 2,000 tokens covering 120 countries. Most of these assets haven't been brought on-chain yet. Once settlement gradually migrates, the $57,000 revenue-sharing baseline could stand on an entirely different scale.

One Landlord May Lose Its Biggest Tenant, Another Just Landed a Major Deal

Arbitrum's "rent collection" model isn't entirely new. Optimism has been running the "landlord" business for quite some time.

The Optimism Collective collects rent from all Superchain member chains (Base, Zora, Mode, Unichain, etc.) via the OP Stack — charging 2.5% of sequencer revenue or 15% of net profit (whichever is higher), with OP Mainnet also contributing its net income to the treasury. However, its "rental income" has been shrinking. In Q1 2026, it further dropped to approximately $2.9 million (with Base alone contributing about $1.4 million), a 21.5% quarter-over-quarter decline from $3.7 million.

In February of this year, Base officially announced it would break away from the OP Stack. By gas fee metrics, Base contributed approximately 96.5% of the revenue flowing into the Collective, and the news caused OP's token to drop 28% in two days.

Meanwhile, Arbitrum has revitalized its own "landlord" business from scratch thanks to Robinhood Chain. The structures are perfectly analogous — both involve collecting rent from external chains for using the base layer's technology, with the money flowing into their respective DAO treasuries (ArbitrumDAO vs. Optimism Collective). The difference is that while Arbitrum's AEP rules were written in 2024, it lacked any major tenants until this week, finally giving the "rent collection" model a sense of scale.

But Can This Major Tenant Be Retained?

It is precisely Base's history that some analysts are using to pour cold water on the situation. Some argue that, following the same playbook, Robinhood Chain will eventually break away from Arbitrum Orbit, just as Base did from the OP Stack, and align directly with Ethereum. According to growthepie data, Robinhood Chain's daily sequencer revenue has already reached nearly $60,000, second only to Base's $72,000 among Ethereum L2s, and nearly three times that of its parent chain, Arbitrum.

More subtly, there's the question of who truly benefits. Within a week of its launch, Robinhood Chain has become the second-largest consumer of Ethereum DA (Data Availability), after Base, with its sequencer paying blob fees in ETH, which is then burned. Some analysts therefore argue that if this chain were to have only one native ecosystem currency, it would more likely be ETH rather than ARB.