Arbitrum DAO reports $6.2 million in first-half income as Robinhood Chain adds new revenue stream

Arbitrum DAO accrued $6.19 million in income during the first half of 2026, according to an unaudited report released by the Arbitrum Foundation on Wednesday.

The income was generated over four income lines: Arbitrum One transaction fees; Timeboost, which auctions priority access to the network's sequencer; Expansion Program licensing fees paid by chains using Arbitrum technology; and returns from treasury management.

Gross margins across its protocol revenue topped 97%, according to the report, compared with more than 90% for 2025. The DAO also held $125 million in non-ARB (ARB) treasury assets at the end of June.

The network processed 478 million transactions during the period, around 18% of its 2.7 billion lifetime total. Average monthly stablecoin transfer volume was more than $70 billion, while stablecoin holders increased 40% to 10.5 million, and Arbitrum ranked first by tokenized real-world asset deployments, with more than 2,000 assets deployed, per the report.

"The first half of 2026 shows the Arbitrum ecosystem's financial profile broadening," Arbitrum Foundation Head of Investment Strategy Brendan Ma said in a statement shared with The Block. "The demand behind those numbers comes from the convergence of traditional finance and onchain finance that is happening today on the Arbitrum platform."

Robinhood Chain's growing impact

Robinhood Chain, built using Arbitrum's technology stack, launched on mainnet on July 1. That month, Expansion Program licensing fees brought in $360,000 and accounted for 35% of Arbitrum DAO's income, according to the report. The program requires Arbitrum chains that settle outside Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova to return 10% of net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem.

"Against subdued market conditions across the industry, the ecosystem’s growth has accelerated since the half ended," Ma said. "On July’s figures, total income for the third quarter is already on track to exceed the second quarter by more than 40%."

Fees on Robinhood Chain have climbed since then. Users paid a record $3.75 million in fees on Robinhood Chain on Sept. 1, according to The Block's data dashboard. That put it ahead of Ethereum mainnet and Base, according to Growthepie.

Tuesday also witnessed record trading on the chain, with decentralized exchange volume topping $1.5 billion, while total value locked stands at just over $750 million. Before launching the mainnet, Robinhood Chain had processed more than 200 million transactions on its public testnet.

Robinhood (HOOD) had also previously issued its stock tokens on Arbitrum One.