ArbitrumDAO collected $6.19 million of income in the first half of 2026, according to the Arbitrum Foundation’s bi-annual progress update for the six months ended June 30. The report shows a change in where the DAO’s money is coming from: Arbitrum One transaction fees are no longer the main force behind the income line on their own, with more growth coming from chains built by outside companies that license Arbitrum technology and share part of their revenue back with the ecosystem. For now, that shift points to one company, Robinhood.
$6.19 million across four revenue lines
The Foundation said the $6.19 million came from four sources in the half: Arbitrum One transaction fees, Timeboost, Arbitrum Expansion Program license fees, and treasury income. It added that the blended gross margin on protocol revenue exceeded 97%, up from more than 90% for full-year 2025.
Brendan Ma, Head of Investment Strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation, said: 「The first half of 2026 shows the Arbitrum ecosystem’s financial profile broadening. It now looks like a diversified economic enterprise, with four income lines at a blended gross margin above 97% and an expansion programme that accounted for 35% of the ArbitrumDAO’s July income, the first month Robinhood Chain was on mainnet.」
Robinhood Chain accounted for 35% of July DAO income
Under the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains that settle outside Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova return 10% of net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Robinhood Chain settles to Ethereum rather than Arbitrum One, so its payments come through that program instead of through Arbitrum One fees. The Defiant reported in July that Arbitrum would capture 10% of fees from Robinhood Chain.
The report listed July AEP license fees at $360,000, equal to 35% of ArbitrumDAO income for the month. That implies total July income of roughly $1.03 million, although the Foundation did not state a July total directly.
Large gap in current activity between Robinhood Chain and Arbitrum One
According to DefiLlama, Robinhood Chain posted $1.43 billion in decentralized exchange volume over 24 hours and paid $3.75 million in chain fees. Arbitrum One posted $193 million and $14,746 over the same period.
Robinhood Chain’s total value locked stood at $757.1 million, compared with $1.38 billion for Arbitrum One. The two-month-old chain passed Ethereum on daily app revenue on Aug. 29.
478 million transactions processed in the half
The network processed 478 million transactions in the first half, bringing its lifetime total to 2.7 billion, the report said. The Foundation’s own measure of economic activity on the network, which it calls ecosystem GDP, was $206 million for the period and $1.7 billion cumulatively since launch.
Average monthly stablecoin transfer volume exceeded $70 billion.
First in tokenized RWA deployments by count, not by value
Arbitrum ended the half ranked first by tokenized real-world asset deployments, according to rwa.xyz, with more than 2,000 assets. The report noted that this ranking is based on asset count rather than value.
rwa.xyz showed 3,317 assets deployed on Arbitrum on Tuesday, ahead of Solana’s 2,688 and Ethereum’s 2,278. By distributed value, the order reverses: Ethereum held $17.57 billion against Arbitrum’s $779.4 million, roughly 22 times as much.
Enterprise adoption and institutional outreach
On enterprise adoption, the report cited LG Electronics, which announced a pilot onchain advertising network on Arbitrum in June, Mastercard’s extension of stablecoin settlement support to assets on the network, and PayPal’s PYUSD. The Foundation said PYUSD peaked at $475 million on Arbitrum in the first quarter.
It also said the Foundation took part in more than 15 capital markets events and engaged more than 150 institutional investors during the half.
92.3% of ARB unlocked or held in the DAO treasury
As of Aug. 17, about 9.23 billion ARB, or 92.3% of total supply, was unlocked or held in the ArbitrumDAO treasury. The remaining 0.77 billion ARB represents the balance of the original vesting schedule, with the final vest due in March 2027.
At June 30, the DAO held $125 million in non-native treasury assets, excluding ARB. The report also said that less than $200,000 of the Foundation’s ecosystem grants issued in the half was paid upfront without milestone conditions. The Defiant linked that figure to a May funding request in which the Foundation sought $45 million as delegates questioned spending above DAO revenue.
Foundation executive points to Q3 pace based on July data
The Defiant noted that Ma’s second claim is forward-looking and rests on a single month of data.
Ma said: 「The demand behind those numbers comes from the convergence of traditional finance and onchain finance that is happening today on the Arbitrum platform. Against subdued market conditions across the industry, the ecosystem’s growth has accelerated since the half ended. On July’s figures, total income for the third quarter is already on track to exceed the second quarter by more than 40%.」
ARB market data
According to CoinGecko, ARB traded at $0.1074 on Wednesday, down 7.1% over 24 hours and up 15.5% over seven days. The token had a market capitalization of $717.4 million and ranked 87th. It remained 95.5% below its all-time high of $2.39, set in January 2024.
The Defiant said the weekly gain followed Tuesday’s move, when ARB jumped 25% on Robinhood Chain fees.
Onchain figures were sourced from DefiLlama and rwa.xyz as of 11:20 UTC on Sept. 2. Price data came from CoinGecko.