
Arbitrum (ARB) surged more than 45% on Sunday, extending a rally that has seen the token more than double in a week as Robinhood (HOOD) Chain generated around 240 times the fees of Arbitrum’s own network and traders priced in Arbitrum’s cut of that revenue.
DefiLlama data showed that Robinhood Chain attracted $2.9 million in chain fees over the 24 hours through Sunday, compared with $12,238 on Arbitrum’s own chain. Robinhood Chain has taken in roughly $10 million in fees over the last several days, including roughly $6 million on Friday. At that pace, nearly $1 million of that stretch alone was due to flow back to Arbitrum. Traders have pointed to the rising fee stream, and Arbitrum’s portion of it, as a reason behind the rally in ARB.
Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 network Robinhood launched in July, is built on Arbitrum’s technology. In the Arbitrum Expansion Program, participating chains have to pay 10% of the net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. 8% of that revenue goes to the ArbitrumDAO, and 2% goes to the Developer Guild.
ARB’s price was trading at $0.19 over the past 24 hours, with its market cap hitting $1.28 billion. The token is up about 120% over the past week. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around ARB remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter around it shifted to ‘extremely high’ from ‘high’ over the past day.
The difference between the two networks was huge. Robinhood Chain’s total value locked (TVL), or the amount of crypto deposited in its apps, rose to $908.65 million on Sunday, up over 5% in 24 hours and from under $100 million in early July, according to DefiLlama data. The chain saw $1.36 billion in decentralized exchange (DEX) volume in the last 24 hours, and its stablecoin market cap was up over 25% in the last seven days to $964.57 million.
In comparison, Arbitrum’s native chain generated $12,238 in fees and $118.8 million in DEX volume during that timeframe, DefiLlama data showed. Its TVL was $1.41 billion, down from a high of more than $4 billion in late 2025.
Arbitrum’s open interest (OI) also jumped past its August high, with the latest reading at about $255 million compared with $110 million in August. That spike meant that traders were building up a lot more leveraged exposure as ARB rallied, raising the stakes for both further upside and a possible liquidation-driven reversal. CoinGlass’s latest market data also showed open interest at over $290 million, reflecting the scale of the recent price increase.
Crypto analyst Satoshi Stacker noted that “the opportunities aren’t just in microcaps,” adding that “The three top-performing alts out of the top 100 are all related to Robinhood Chain activity today.”
He also said that "there are new coins launching and hitting 10-50X here every day as the ecosystem takes off" and "activity metrics are seeing insane growth" on Robinhood Chain.
Wall Street macro analyst Jordi Visser said that the coming together of AI, crypto, and traditional banking is moving very quickly. He pointed to Robinhood Chain as a big deal as it meant that traditional financial analysts had to rethink Robinhood's growth chances in light of new ways to make money.
But he said that mainstream media are missing out on many of the crypto tokens that are doing well because of the Robinhood Chain story. Visser told investors to learn more about the ecosystem as a whole, stating that the coming year might be characterized by the combination of AI, crypto, and traditional finance.
Read also: HYPE Hits Record High As Jane Street, UBS Among 30 Firms With $75M In ETF Exposure
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