Yakovenko Slams Robinhood Chain Fees as 'Brain Dead'

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has criticized Robinhood Chain fees, calling them 'brain dead' and saying that they are a result of congestion rather than a posted rate. The fees currently average around $0.40 per transaction.

Robinhood Chain went live on mainnet on July 1, 2026, and its usage has been growing rapidly since then. The network runs on Arbitrum technology and settles to Ethereum, using Ether (ETH) for gas. Fees reached a high of $4.22 million in one day against roughly 10.4 million transactions, which lands near $0.40 per transaction.

Yakovenko argues that Solana handles the same work for a fraction of a cent, with a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature. Lamports are Solana's smallest unit, and 1 SOL equals 1 billion lamports. At the current Solana price near $102, that fee stays well under a cent.

The fees on Robinhood Chain also feed Arbitrum, with the brokerage handing over 10% of net revenue under its licensing terms. Of that, 8% goes to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, and 2% funds the Developer Guild. Those payments have already revived Arbitrum's ARB token, which climbed 90% off its record low.