Arbitrum DAO reported $6.19 million in income for the first half of 2026, with its expansion licensing program emerging as a potentially larger revenue source after Robinhood Chain went live in July, according to an unaudited financial update from the Arbitrum Foundation.
The report put protocol gross margins above 97%, reflecting the relatively low cost of operating Arbitrum’s infrastructure compared with the fees and other revenue flowing into the DAO. Arbitrum’s income during the six-month period came from transaction fees on Arbitrum One, Timeboost sequencer-priority auctions, licensing payments from chains using its technology, and returns generated by treasury management.
The figures offer an early look at how Arbitrum is trying to develop revenue beyond its flagship network. Transaction fees remain tied to activity on Arbitrum One, while the expansion program gives the DAO a financial claim on chains that use Arbitrum’s stack but operate separately from Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.
Robinhood Chain starts contributing licensing income
Robinhood Chain, a blockchain built with Arbitrum technology, launched on mainnet on July 1. Its arrival had an immediate effect on licensing revenue: the expansion program generated $360,000 in July, accounting for 35% of the DAO’s income that month, the Arbitrum Foundation said.
Under the program’s rules, Arbitrum-based chains that settle outside Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova must return 10% of net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. The July result was the first full month in which Robinhood Chain had been operating on mainnet.
That structure gives Arbitrum DAO exposure to the commercial activity of chains using its technology without requiring all applications and users to remain on Arbitrum One. The model resembles an infrastructure licensing arrangement: a chain can operate with its own brand, products, and user base, while a portion of its revenue returns to the DAO that governs the underlying technology ecosystem.
The report said Robinhood Chain’s user-paid fees reached $3.75 million on Sept. 1, a daily record. Using data from blockchain analytics platform Growthepie, the update said the chain ranked ahead of Ethereum mainnet and Base on that measure for the day.
Robinhood Chain also recorded more than $1.5 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume on Tuesday, according to the report, while total value locked stood at just over $750 million. Total value locked measures the crypto assets deposited into a network’s decentralized finance applications and is commonly used as an indicator of available on-chain liquidity.
The chain had already processed more than 200 million transactions on its public testnet before its mainnet debut, the update said. Robinhood had also previously issued stock tokens on Arbitrum One, giving the company an existing connection to the Arbitrum ecosystem before the dedicated chain launched.
Arbitrum One activity remains the foundation
Arbitrum One processed 478 million transactions in the first half of 2026, representing about 18% of its 2.7 billion lifetime transaction total, according to the foundation’s report. The pace indicates that a substantial share of all activity on the network has occurred during the past six months, though the report did not provide a directly comparable figure for the previous half-year.
Stablecoin usage was another major component of network activity. Average monthly stablecoin transfer volume exceeded $70 billion during the period, while the number of stablecoin holders grew 40% to 10.5 million, the report said.
The update also cited network-level tracking that placed Arbitrum first in tokenized real-world asset deployments, with more than 2,000 assets issued on the network. Tokenized real-world assets are blockchain-based representations of traditional financial or physical assets, such as funds, bonds, equities, or commodities.
Arbitrum reported that its main network processed 1.3 million transfers in a single day and held a stablecoin supply of $4.32 billion. Those figures point to a network whose activity extends beyond volatile crypto trading, with stablecoins increasingly serving as a major source of transfers, liquidity, and settlement.
Treasury provides a financial buffer
The DAO held $125 million in non-ARB treasury assets at the end of June, the foundation said. Those assets generated part of the first-half income through treasury management returns, adding a source of funds that does not depend directly on transaction volumes or licensing receipts.
The treasury’s composition was not detailed in the supplied update, but the reported balance gives the DAO resources beyond its native ARB token holdings. That can help fund grants, technical development, security work, governance operations, and ecosystem programs without relying solely on token sales.
The report also cited retained profit of $963,612 after storage costs and partner revenue shares. As an unaudited update, the figures provide a snapshot rather than a final accounting statement, but they show Arbitrum measuring its operations through recurring income and operating costs alongside transaction and user-growth metrics.
Robinhood Chain’s first full month adds a new variable to those results. If its fee activity remains elevated, the 10% revenue-sharing requirement could make licensing a more visible part of Arbitrum DAO’s finances, reducing the DAO’s dependence on fees generated solely by Arbitrum One.
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