In Brief:
- The Arbitrum Foundation published its bi-annual progress update Sept. 2, reporting $6.19 million in unaudited ArbitrumDAO income for the six months to June 30.
- Robinhood Chain reached mainnet July 1, one day after the reporting window closed, and remits 10% of net revenue to the ecosystem under the Arbitrum Expansion Program.
- AEP license fees hit $360,000 in July, 35% of the DAO’s income that month. The report carries no gaming-specific breakout.
ArbitrumDAO took in $6.19 million over the first half of 2026, according to the Arbitrum Foundation’s progress update published Sept. 2. The figure is unaudited and covers Jan. 1 through June 30.
It also misses the chain now doing the heavy lifting. Robinhood Chain went live on mainnet July 1, one day after the reporting window closed.
ICYMI: The Arbitrum Foundation 2026 half year report is now live.
Over the first six months, the Arbitrum Platform has ramped up it’s efforts in driving long-term growth and sustainable value back to the ecosystem:
> Bringing Robinhood Chain out of stealth and expanding the@ArbitrumView on X ↗
The revenue line that isn’t in the report
In July, its first full month on mainnet, Arbitrum Expansion Program license fees came to $360,000. That was 35% of the DAO’s income for the month.
Under the AEP, chains settling outside Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova return 10% of net protocol revenue to the ecosystem. The same terms apply across more than 30 Arbitrum chains. Robinhood Chain is just the one with a $100 billion fintech behind it, 28 million users and $307 billion in assets under management.
The gap has widened since. Robinhood Chain recorded $3.75 million in daily transaction fees on Sept. 1, its highest since launch, with DEX volume above $1.5 billion and TVL over $750 million. By early September the chain had contributed $531,641 in 30-day revenue share to the DAO treasury.
That money goes to the treasury, not to ARB holders. ARB still rallied 26% to 30% to near $0.11 on the numbers.
Four income lines, thin costs
The DAO’s H1 income came from Arbitrum One transaction fees, Timeboost sequencer auctions, AEP license fees and treasury management returns. Blended gross margin on protocol revenue topped 97%, up from more than 90% across 2025.
Timeboost, which auctions priority access to the sequencer, launched in 2025 and cleared $5 million in revenue in its first seven months.
The DAO held $125 million in non-ARB treasury assets at June 30, split across ether, real-world assets and stablecoins. Less than $200,000 of the Foundation’s ecosystem grants went out upfront without milestone conditions during the half.
“The first half of 2026 shows the Arbitrum ecosystem’s financial profile broadening,” said Brendan Ma, head of investment strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation. “The demand behind those numbers comes from the convergence of traditional finance and onchain finance.”
Activity numbers
Arbitrum processed 478 million transactions during the half, roughly 18% of its 2.7 billion lifetime total. Ecosystem GDP, the Foundation’s measure of onchain economic activity, hit $206 million for the period against a cumulative $1.7 billion.
Average monthly stablecoin transfer volume exceeded $70 billion. Stablecoin holders rose 40% to 10.5 million. Derivatives open interest climbed 434% between December 2025 and June 2026, peaking at $1.5 billion.
RWA assets under management across the ecosystem reached about $850 million, a threefold year-over-year increase, with more than 2,000 tokenized assets live. The Foundation calls Arbitrum the top platform for RWA deployments and named Robinhood, LG, Mastercard and PayPal among the companies building or expanding on it.
No gaming section
The update doesn’t break out gaming metrics. Arbitrum’s game activity still sits largely on Orbit chains including Xai, and on Nova, where Proof of Play’s Pirate Nation runs.
The DAO’s investment arm, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, was previously the Gaming Catalyst Program. It announced its first cohort May 8, 2025, committing $10 million to Wildcard, Hyve Labs, T-Rex and Xai alongside Paradigm, Framework Ventures and BITKRAFT.
How Robinhood Chain got here
Robinhood announced the chain in June 2025 and opened a public testnet Feb. 10, 2026. It cleared 4 million transactions in its first week, with Alchemy, Allium, Chainlink, LayerZero and TRM integrating early.
Mainnet was announced at Robinhood’s “The World is Flat” keynote at the Old Royal Naval College in London. The chain runs on Arbitrum Orbit with ETH as the gas token and block times around 100 milliseconds, and shipped with Uniswap and Chainlink live on day one. Robinhood also put $1 million into the 2026 Arbitrum Open House program, funding buildathons and founder events in New York, Dubai, London and Singapore.
Within a week of launch the chain logged $568 million in daily volume, and ARB led gains among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies.
Ma said third-quarter income is tracking to beat the second quarter by more than 40% on July’s figures alone. “Against subdued market conditions across the industry, the ecosystem’s growth has accelerated since the half ended,” he said.
Over 24 hours spanning Sept. 1 and 2, Robinhood Chain produced roughly $1.92 million in chain revenue. Arbitrum One collected about $16,000 in the same window.
