Arbitrum USD

Robinhood Chain, the layer-2 network operated by Robinhood, is considering a mechanism that would let users pay fees to prioritize specific transactions, CoinDesk reported on the 9th, citing people familiar with the matter. The mechanism under consideration is the Priority Gas Auction, or PGA, a new system developed by Arbitrum, which provides the chain's infrastructure. Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum-compatible layer-2 that Robinhood launched on July 1, built on Arbitrum technology and designed for tokenized real-world financial assets; according to DefiLlama, its total value locked stood at about 1 billion dollars as of the 10th, ranking ninth among blockchains. The chain currently processes on-chain transactions in order of arrival, and paying a priority fee does not change the ordering, but PGA splits a 250-millisecond block into two 125-millisecond rounds and orders transactions by priority determined by priority fees; Arbitrum introduced it on Arbitrum One on September 24, replacing Timeboost. According to Arbitrum, PGA priority fees are designed to flow into the Arbitrum DAO treasury, and in the first week after launch they contributed more than 120,000 dollars to Arbitrum's revenue, while Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder explained that Robinhood keeps about 90 percent of sequencer revenue, with the remaining roughly 10 percent flowing to the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Standard Chartered has issued a report forecasting that Arbitrum will surge 70-fold to reach $10 by 2030, while Bitcoin recovers toward $78,000 amid progress on crypto legislation in the United States. The U.S. Senate is preparing to vote on the CLARITY Act, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is moving forward with rules to regulate digital assets. The market is also closely watching the moves of Robinhood, MetaMask, and Bitmine.

The native token of layer-2 blockchain Arbitrum, ARB, has surged, trading at around $0.13 per ARB as of September 3, up about 44% from around $0.09 a week earlier. Its market capitalization has expanded to approximately $860 million, with 24-hour trading volume also increasing to about $450 million. On September 1, it surged about 30% in a single day. The background includes the expansion of fee revenue from "Robinhood Chain," a proprietary chain built by major U.S. online brokerage Robinhood using Arbitrum's technology. According to The Block, the chain's fee revenue hit a record high of $3.75 million on September 1, surpassing Ethereum itself and layer-2 Base. On the same day, decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume also exceeded $1.5 billion, setting a new record. External chains like Robinhood Chain are eligible for the "Expansion Program," which returns 10% of fee revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem, with 8% going to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and the remaining 2% to a developer fund.

Robinhood's recently launched Layer-2 blockchain, built on Arbitrum's technology stack, has rapidly amassed $257.4 million in total value locked and processed $4.5 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume in a single week, yet only a tiny fraction of its fees flow to Ethereum. According to Ark Invest analyst Lorenzo Valente, of the $816,000 in cumulative chain fees through July 13, just 0.15%—about $1,538—reached Ethereum, while Arbitrum received roughly $80,000. The chain routes 10% of net protocol revenue to Arbitrum, with 8% going to its native token holders and 2% to ecosystem developers, leaving Ethereum with a negligible share. Analysts warn that without a fundamental overhaul of Ethereum's tokenomics to capture Layer-2 activity, the success of chains like Robinhood's will continue to benefit Arbitrum holders and Robinhood shareholders at Ethereum's expense.