Following a recent surge in fees on Robinhood Chain, discussions have intensified over why it adopted Arbitrum technology rather than deploying directly on Solana. On September 6, Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko engaged in a public debate, with the focus centered on revenue allocation rather than per-transaction costs.
Robinhood can retain approximately 90% of net revenue.
Under the current Arbitrum Expansion Program adopted by Robinhood Chain, 10% of on-chain net protocol revenue must be allocated to the Arbitrum ecosystem, with 8 percentage points going to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2 percentage points dedicated to developer grant programs.
Goldfeder stated that, as a result, Robinhood can still retain approximately 90% of its net on-chain revenue. This is not the total fees, but rather the net income after deducting network expenses such as the cost of publishing data to Ethereum.
The article states that Robinhood Chain's daily fees once reached $6.04 million, and after deducting related costs and splits, approximately $5.44 million was retained. Revenue over the past seven days amounted to about $20.33 million, but this level was driven by short-term high activity and cannot be directly interpreted as a stable annual performance.
The core of the dispute is who takes the on-chain value.
Yakovenko's view is that Robinhood could deploy its services on Solana without building its own Layer 2, subsidize users' transaction costs internally, and then charge users through its application interface. This approach would avoid the costs of operating a separate Layer 2 network.
Goldfeder's counterargument is that this model only captures user behavior within Robinhood’s own frontend and cannot account for transaction revenue generated from other on-chain entry points. If third-party wallets, trading bots, decentralized exchanges, or token platforms interact directly with the contract, the associated network fees will flow to Solana validators and stakers, not Robinhood.
Under the Robinhood Chain model, Robinhood operates the sequencing infrastructure, enabling it to earn fees not only from its own frontend but also from on-chain transactions that bypass its frontend. Recently, meme coin platform Pons and trading platform GMGN have become significant sources of traffic on this chain, with some transactions originating outside Robinhood’s brokerage interface.
September 29 marks the expiration of the subsidy, serving as a milestone.
Robinhood previously offered a 90-day gas subsidy for transactions initiated through Robinhood Wallet, and this program will expire on September 29. During the subsidy period, activity on Robinhood Chain increased significantly, with daily average DEX trading volume reaching approximately $1.71 billion and the total value locked in native protocols reaching about $1.17 billion.
However, it remains to be seen whether this growth is sustainable. Chain analysis firm Bitquery previously found that Robinhood Chain’s gas prices increased by approximately 25 times over 11 days, with a significant portion of the new demand coming from a small number of highly active wallets. This suggests that current fee revenue may be highly concentrated.
After the subsidy ends, the market will focus on two key points: whether Robinhood Wallet users will remain active after bearing their own gas fees, and whether trading volumes generated by external applications such as Pons, GMGN, and Uniswap can be sustained. Robinhood has not yet indicated whether it will extend the subsidy, nor has it disclosed how this on-chain revenue will be reflected in its financial statements.
From a business model perspective, the core of this debate is not whether Solana or Arbitrum has lower transaction fees, but whether owning a Layer 2 chain is more effective at capturing revenue than deploying applications on existing Layer 1s. Robinhood Chain’s first full operational phase after subsidies end may provide a clearer answer.