Robinhood vs. Arbitrum: A Blockchain Revenue Showdown
The debate over whether Robinhood's choice to use Arbitrum technology for its blockchain is better than Solana has been sparked by the recent surge in activity on the network.
According to Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder, Robinhood retains around 90% of the net revenue generated from its chain. In contrast, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko argued that Robinhood could instead monetize users through application-level fees directly itself.
Goldefeder countered that if Robinhood were to deploy its services on Solana, it would not be able to capture value from activity occurring outside of its interface. He pointed out that third-party wallets, trading bots, and decentralized exchanges can interact directly with blockchain contracts, generating revenue for the network without going through Robinhood.
The Arbitrum Expansion Program allows Robinhood Chain to retain 90% of its net protocol revenue, with 10% going to the broader Arbitrum ecosystem. This includes eight percentage points to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and two percentage points funding the Arbitrum Developer Guild.