Arbitrum jumps 19% benefitting from Robinhood's $568 million onchain trading frenzy

Digital broker Robinhood's new chain is off to a flying start, and the benefits are trickling to Ethereum-based network Arbitrum.

The native token of Arbitrum (ARB) jumped 19% over the past 24 hours, making it the best-performing asset in the top 100 cryptocurrency, according to CoinDesk data. Bitcoin BTC$63,251.41 edged 1.5% higher to trade above $63,000, while ether (ETH) was up 0.5% in an otherwise muted day.

The gains came as Robinhood Chain, built on top of Arbitrum's technology stack and rolled out to the broader public a week ago, processed over $568 million in daily trading volume on Wednesday and logged over $350 million so far on Thursday, according to blockchain data from Entropy Advisors. Much of that activity was driven by a burst of memecoin trading, while stablecoin balances on the network also climbed quickly above $260 million within its first week.

The activity is translating into revenue for Arbitrum. Under the agreement, 10% of Robinhood Chain's net protocol revenue flows back to the Arbitrum ecosystem, split between the DAO treasury and the Developer Guild.

Robinhood's crypto push

Robinhood unveiled the chain at its London event last week as the centerpiece of a broader crypto push. The brokerage announced it would expand access to tokenized U.S. stocks to customers in more than 120 countries, launched a DeFi-powered savings vault offering yields through the lending protocol Morpho, and outlined plans to expand its crypto business into AI-powered trading and additional asset classes.

The early traction is running ahead of expectations. In an April report, FalconX projected that Robinhood Chain could generate about $ 1.1 million in transaction fees in the first six months.

"Based on just yesterday's activity, Robinhood is run-rating at more than $12.5 million in annualized revenue already," Brendan Ma, head of investment strategies at the Arbitrum Foundation, wrote on X. He added that most activity tied to tokenized real-world assets (RWA) has yet to arrive.

While the newfound trading frenzy may fade, onchain activity could become a key new revenue source for Robinhood over time. FalconX forecasted that revenue on transactions could grow to $60 million annually by 2030 as users branch out from tokenized stocks into DeFi and other onchain applications.