On Sept. 15, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital asset research, Geoffrey Kendrick, started coverage on ARB and put a $10 price target on it for the end of 2030. ARB was trading around $0.14, the report said. That works out to roughly 70x upside.
After the note came out, ARB climbed about 7% over 24 hours. Why? One thing, mainly: Robinhood Chain.
Robinhood Chain has become a major revenue driver for Arbitrum
Robinhood Chain launched in July 2026, built on Arbitrum’s Orbit stack. Just over two months later, it had already turned into the biggest single source of revenue for the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Kendrick’s report lays out a few numbers. After Robinhood Chain went live, Arbitrum’s monthly revenue run-rate rose to about $5 million. That is more than five times the level from before launch.
In its first 70 days, Robinhood Chain produced about $42.58 million in user fees. Around $4.26 million of that went back to the Arbitrum DAO. In July alone, Robinhood Chain paid about $360,000 in licensing fees, which matched 35% of Arbitrum DAO’s total revenue for that month. By Sept. 1, Robinhood Chain’s daily fee revenue had hit $3.75 million, and about $370,000 was paid to Arbitrum in a single day.
From those figures, Kendrick wrote: "The launch of Robinhood Chain proves that Arbitrum has the potential to become the infrastructure of choice for traditional finance as assets move on-chain." He also forecast that $4 trillion in traditional assets would be tokenized by the end of 2028, with Arbitrum capturing an increasing share of that market.
Kendrick’s projected price path for ARB
The report mapped out this path for ARB:
- End-2026: $0.50
- 2027: $1.50
- 2028: $3.50
- 2029: $6.50
- End-2030: $10
Revenue goes to the DAO treasury, not directly to token holders
But the report also points to what may be the biggest risk. Right now, ARB holders have no direct claim on Arbitrum revenue.
Under the revenue split described in the article, 10% of Robinhood Chain’s net protocol revenue goes to the Arbitrum ecosystem. From that slice, 8% goes to the DAO treasury and 2% goes to a developer fund. The other 90% stays with Robinhood.
So when Robinhood Chain generated $42.58 million in fees, about $4.26 million went to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Simple enough. But that money went to the DAO treasury address, not straight to ARB holders in any direct way.
At the moment, ARB is a governance token. Holders can vote on DAO proposals. They do not get protocol revenue distributions, buyback benefits, or burn-related value transfer.
That leaves ARB in an awkward middle spot. Real cash is flowing into the DAO treasury. And yet there is still no system that passes treasury value through to the token.
The bullish target depends on a future governance decision
So the 70x case is, in plain terms, a bet that the DAO will one day approve a way to tie treasury value to ARB holders. The article gives three possible paths:
- Buyback and burn: the DAO could use treasury funds to buy ARB on the market and burn those tokens, shrinking circulating supply.
- Staking yield: Arbitrum could set up an ARB staking pool and send part of treasury income to holders who lock their tokens.
- Revenue distribution: treasury income could be paid directly to ARB holders on a pro-rata basis. The article says this would be the most sensitive path under U.S. regulation because it could trigger a securities classification.
So far, none of those paths has made it through a DAO proposal. As the article puts it, buying ARB today is really a bet on a future governance event.
Early Robinhood Chain growth may not match the long-term tokenization thesis
Kendrick’s long-term argument rests on tokenized traditional finance assets. But the article says a lot of Robinhood Chain’s early growth has actually come from meme coin launch platforms and trading apps, not tokenized stocks or other traditional assets.
That meme coin activity can still throw off real fees. Sure. But the article says there is still a gap between that current revenue source and the broader argument that Arbitrum could become the preferred infrastructure stack for traditional finance.
If Robinhood Chain stays heavily tied to meme coin trading volume, then revenue stability would depend on the meme coin cycle too. And in the article’s framing, that is a more volatile income source than tokenized securities activity.