Arbitrum prices fall back after soaring nearly 160%

The Arbitrum token ARB pulled back after soaring nearly 160%, still gaining 92% weekly.

The price of the Arbitrum (ARB) token soared from approximately US$0.08 to a high of US$0.207, an increase of nearly 160%, before correcting back to approximately US$0.1643. Although it fell by 13.53% in 24 hours, the overall increase in seven days was still as high as about 92%. Behind this round of gains, the market is pricing a big piece of news: the Ethereum Layer 2 network "Robinhood Chain" built based on Arbitrum technology has generated fee revenue that exceeds Arbitrum's own flagship network, and some of the revenue will flow back to the ecosystem.

However, the key is where the money goes and who cannot benefit directly from it. According to the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains that settle outside of Arbitrum One need to return 10% of net agreement revenue to the ecosystem, 8% of which goes to the Arbitrum DAO vault and 2% to the Developer Guild. The money is not directly distributed to ARB token holders.

Robinhood Chain's fee revenue exceeds that of the Arbitrum Mainnet

Robinhood Chain will open the public Mainnet based on the Arbitrum Orbit Framework on July 1, 2026. The network bills directly to Ethereum and uses ETH as a Gas fee, so it does not pay revenue to Arbitrum One's sequencers, but rather a license fee. This mechanism explains why the performance of the two data under the same brand is very different. On a typical day, Robinhood Chain generated approximately $1.92 million in 24-hour revenue, more than all other blockchains; Arbitrum One only charged approximately $16,000 in fees during the same period.

Data shows that in less than two months, the chain's cumulative decentralized exchange (DEX) transaction volume exceeded US$47 billion, and total daily revenue increased nearly twenty-fold to approximately US$1.08 million. Most trading volume is concentrated on a single platform: Uniswap has become the main trading venue for Robinhood Chain, absorbing most transactions on record days.

10% of the proceeds went to the treasury, not the token holder's wallet

On the day that $1.92 million was generated above, approximately $175,612 went to the Arbitrum Foundation. CoinDesk pointed out that the market value of ARB increased by about $170 million that day, far exceeding the actual cash received. This is the core of the controversy: the proceeds go to the vault, and the official Arbitrum document clearly states that the beneficiaries are the vault and the developer guild, not the token holders. To benefit holders, governance agencies must first vote to modify the tokenics model, but this has not yet happened. As a result, the current rally is a bet that future earnings streams may benefit the ARB, rather than a direct claim that funds have flowed into wallets.

In fact, this background predates the emergence of catalysts. In the six months leading up to Robinhood Chain's launch, the Arbitrum Foundation reported DAO revenue of US$6.19 million, a gross margin of 97%, and an average monthly stablecoin transfer volume of more than US$70 billion, a basis that existed before any Robinhood fees arrived. More illustrative data is: In July, Robinhood Chain's license fees accounted for 35% of the month's DAO revenue. The flow of funds on the chain also confirms this. Arbitrum once achieved a net inflow of bridging assets of US$1.6 billion in a single day, ranking first among all chains.

Offchain Labs and Solana founders debate over "landlords" versus "tenants"

The business model itself has sparked public debate. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko believes that the 10% fee Robinhood pays to Arbitrum is enough to cover four times Solana's fee, and can even achieve complete gas-free. However, Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder called this "ridiculous view." He pointed out that Robinhood retains about 90% of Gas fees on Arbitrum, while on Solana it will retain a zero percentage of underlying fees and subsidize users out of pocket. "Robinhood chose Arbitrum because they wanted to be a 'landlord' rather than a 'tenant.' Goldfeder wrote. When Yakovenko suggested charging on the front end to circumvent expensive back-ends, Goldfeder countered that most of the fees came from activities that never touched Robinhood's front end, so the party as a "tenant" would not be able to capture any benefits.

Technical indicators show overbought, RSI hits 70

Price movements are well ahead of the trend line. The 20-day moving average is around $0.113 and the 200-day moving average is around $0.099. ARBs peak well above these two moving averages, a pattern that usually leads to pullbacks. The 14th Relative Strength Index (RSI) recorded 70.25. The RSI is used to measure the unilateralism of recent buying behavior, with a reading of 70 or above indicating an increased probability of a correction. The current 13% decline is a signal that the correction is beginning.

Based on a Fibonacci retracement drawn from a high of US$0.207 to a June low of US$0.072, the correction may pause at the following locations:

• Recent highs/resistance: $0.207
• Current price: $0.166
• Fibonacci 0.382 /First Support: $0.155
• Fibonacci 0.5 /near 20th EMA: $0.139
• Fibonacci 0.618 /Early Breakthrough Level: $0.123

92.6 million ARB tokens will be unlocked on September 16.

The 92.63 million ARB tokens originally scheduled to be unlocked on September 16 will increase the sellable supply after the market has just experienced a craze. In addition, Robinhood Chain's activities rely in part on the 90-day Gas subsidy through the end of September, which expires and will provide a clear indication for the first time whether the fee base remains solid without subsidies.

On top of these two, there is the impact of August U.S. consumer price index (CPI) data. The data will be released at 8:30 a.m. EDT on September 11. The year-on-year inflation rate in July was 3.4%, still above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%. Cryptocurrencies are considered high-beta risk assets during the release of such data. If the high temperature data and token unlocking occur in the same week, it will provide ARB, which is already in a state of high expansion, with two reasons for further decline.

The deeper question lies after the next K-line: Can the fee base survive after the subsidy ends? Will the Arbitrum DAO establish a revenue path that allows holders to share the current pricing of its tokens? Until these issues are resolved, the ARB is more like a leveraged bet on Robinhood Chain traffic than a direct claim on its cash flow.