Key highlights:
- ArbitrumDAO saw $6.19 million in income during the first half of 2026
- Robinhood Chain accounted for a major part of the DAO's income
- ARB has surged over 50% over the past week
Arbitrum has posted one of its strongest weekly runs in months. The coin climbed over 50% as new financial data showed the token's network pulling in substantial revenue from outside partners for the first time.
The rally comes after a new progress report from the DAO that governs the network, which showed that $6.19 million in income was collected in the first six months of 2026.
Robinhood Chain emerges as Arbitrum's major revenue driver
A major part of the income generated was thanks to the new Robinhood Chain, a network built using Arbitrum's technology. Under the expansion program that governs these outside deployments, participating chains return 10% of their net protocol revenue back to the ecosystem.
In July, its first month on mainnet, Robinhood Chain generated $360,000 in licensing fees, which made up about 35% of that month's total DAO income.
The activity difference between the two chains was particularly interesting. Robinhood Chain handled $1.43 billion in decentralized exchange volume over a single 24-hour period and paid $3.75 million in fees, compared with $193 million in volume and about $14,700 in fees on the main chain over the same window.
Robinhood Chain's total value locked has grown to over $801 million, against $1.4 billion on the older chain. It also recently crossed about $874 million in DEX volume, outpacing Ethereum and Hyperliquid.
Total Value Locked on Robinhood Chain. Source: DeFiLlama
Brendan Ma, Head of Investment Strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation, said the update "shows the ecosystem's financial profile broadening," pointing to four income lines carrying a joint gross margin above 97%.
He added that momentum has kept building since the first half closed, adding that third-quarter income is "already on track to exceed the second quarter by more than 40%" based on July's numbers alone.
ARB Price surges alongside Arbitrum's revenue news
The token has responded quickly to the improving fundamentals. Arbitrum traded around $0.136 this week, up about 28% in the last 24 hours. The coin is also up about 50% for the week. However, the token is still below its previous highs, down more than 95% from its 2024 ATH.
Its daily trading volume has also jumped to around $503 million, which is about nine times the daily average from the previous week. Open interest in ARB has also jumped by 35%, according to data from Coinglass.
ARB open interest data. Source: Coinglass
Notably, Arbitrum has continued to expand its ecosystem. It finished the half ranked first by the number of tokenized real-world assets deployed on it, with more than 2,000 such assets. Ethereum still dominates the total value locked in those assets, according to rwa.xyz.
The network also processed 478 million transactions during the half, bringing its lifetime total past 2.7 billion. Its average monthly stablecoin transfer volume topped $70 billion.
