ARK Invest says Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 network Robinhood opened on 1 July, brought in about $51 million of network revenue in the third quarter of 2026, against about $41 million for Ethereum itself. The figures come from ARK’s DeFi Quarterly for Q3 2026, released on 21 October, according to Cryptonomist and Bloomingbit, which reported them on 22 October after a first Chinese-language summary by Odaily the evening before.
ARK’s report page refused access when Coindaro tried to open it on 22 October, and none of the outlets carrying the numbers says how ARK defines revenue. So the $51 million and the $41 million are ARK’s figures as reported by those outlets.
Public data points the same way, with smaller totals. DefiLlama’s chain-level series, which counts only the gas users pay, gives Robinhood Chain about $46.2 million of fees for 1 July to 30 September and Ethereum about $34.6 million. Most of Robinhood Chain’s money came in two weeks of September, from memecoin trading, and its daily fees are now about a hundredth of the peak.
What ARK’s report says about Robinhood Chain revenue
According to the coverage, Robinhood Chain’s roughly $51 million came in its first quarter of operation. Ethereum’s roughly $41 million was about 35% lower than in the second quarter. Cryptonomist and Bloomingbit both put Robinhood Chain’s decentralised exchange volume at about $65 billion for the quarter, fourth among the chains ARK tracks.
Tokenized stocks are a large part of the chain’s pitch. ARK counts about $13.7 billion of tokenized-stock trading on Robinhood Chain in the quarter, second only to BNB Chain at about $16.5 billion, Cryptonomist reported.
Across the networks it follows, ARK puts revenue at about $349 million, up 24% from the second quarter but about 47% below a year earlier. ARK calls it the first quarterly increase in five quarters and credits Solana’s recovery and the debut of Robinhood Chain.
ARK does not present the $51 million as a new normal. It expects Robinhood Chain’s revenue to fall, because recent changes to the chain’s gas settings remove the high congestion fees users paid in the launch quarter.
Tokenized stocks took 9% of DEX trading
The wider report, as summarised by Odaily on 21 October, puts total spot DEX volume at about $571 billion, up 13% on the quarter and the first rise in four quarters. Tokenized-stock trading on DEXs reached about $50 billion, roughly nine times the second-quarter figure, lifting its share of spot DEX volume from about 1% to about 9%.
Ethereum lost ground on several of ARK’s measures. Its DEX volume fell 27% on the quarter, Base’s 17%. Ethereum holds about $16.7 billion of tokenized real-world assets, but its share of that market slipped from about 50% at the end of June to about 44%.
Base, Coinbase’s own layer 2, shows how volatile this income is. In its second-quarter results, Coinbase reported $47 million of “other transaction revenue” (the line where Base sits), down 11% on the quarter, “largely driven by lower Base revenue”, according to its earnings presentation.
Odaily’s summary adds that stablecoin supply fell 3% to $309 billion, monthly active addresses rose 39% to 73 million, and open interest on perpetual-futures DEXs climbed 76% to $24 billion, about $13 billion of it (53%) on Hyperliquid. Our report on chip stock perpetuals losing $51.6M in ten minutes shows how fast that market can turn.
What ARK leaves undefined
Every outlet found repeats ARK. Bloomingbit links to the report; nobody has published an independent figure that reaches the same two numbers.
The coverage leaves out how the numbers were built. It does not say whether Robinhood Chain’s $51 million is the gross gas paid by users or what is left after the cost of posting data to Ethereum, nor whether Ethereum’s $41 million includes the fees that are burned. ARK’s data provider is not named either.
DefiLlama’s chain-level data, pulled on 22 October, comes closest. Its Ethereum fees fell from about $51.8 million in the second quarter to $34.6 million in the third, down 33%, close to the 35% drop ARK reports. Its Robinhood Chain fees, at $46.2 million, sit a little below ARK’s $51 million. Neither match is exact, and DefiLlama does not claim to be ARK’s source.
Burned fees versus sequencer margin
On Ethereum, a transaction fee has two parts since the EIP-1559 change of August 2021. The base fee is burned: it leaves circulation and is paid to nobody. Validators receive the priority tip and whatever MEV (value captured from ordering transactions) they extract. Fees on the main chain have also been modest since the Dencun upgrade of March 2024 moved rollup data to cheaper “blobs”.
The quarter’s numbers show the split. Of Ethereum’s $34.6 million of gas and blob fees, DefiLlama counts about $9.4 million as burned, its definition of Ethereum “revenue”. The rest, about $25 million, went to validators as tips.
DefiLlama’s other Ethereum series, which adds every application on the network, gives about $915 million of fees and $169 million of revenue for the same quarter. “Ethereum revenue” for one quarter can therefore mean $9 million or $900 million, depending on what is counted.
How a layer 2 like Robinhood Chain earns
A layer-2 network works differently. Users pay gas, in ETH on Robinhood Chain, to a sequencer that orders their transactions. The chain keeps that fee and pays Ethereum for posting its data and settling there. In a July snapshot cited by Chainstack, the chain collected about $843,000 of user fees in a day and paid Ethereum about $1,600. In another, Crypto Briefing counted about $1.9 million of fees against about $12,000.
There is one more deduction. Under the Arbitrum Expansion Program, Robinhood Chain gives 10% of its profit to Arbitrum: 8% to the DAO treasury and 2% to a developer guild, according to Chainstack. Robinhood’s documentation says the chain is “built on Arbitrum Dedicated Blockchains, a modular Layer-2 framework”.
DefiLlama applies both deductions. Its Robinhood Chain revenue for the quarter, net of Ethereum costs and the Arbitrum share, is about $41.5 million out of $46.2 million of fees. Unlike Ethereum’s fees, that margin is not burned or spread across validators: it stays with the chain. Robinhood’s docs say transactions are ordered first come, first served, with no auction on priority fees.
A launch promotion adds a question. Crypto Briefing reported a 90-day subsidy that made transactions effectively free for users at launch; when it ended is not confirmed. If Robinhood paid part of the gas, part of the chain’s revenue may have been self-funded. How ARK treats it is not known.
What DefiLlama’s data shows for Robinhood Chain
The figures below are Coindaro’s sums of DefiLlama’s daily values for 1 July to 30 September, from its public Robinhood Chain and Ethereum series, retrieved on 22 October.
| Measure, Q3 2026 | Robinhood Chain | Ethereum | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Network revenue” (definition not published) | about $51M | about $41M | ARK Invest, via Cryptonomist and Bloomingbit |
| Chain gas fees paid by users | $46.2M | $34.6M | DefiLlama, chain only |
| Chain revenue (Robinhood: net of Ethereum costs and Arbitrum share; Ethereum: fees burned) | $41.5M | $9.4M | DefiLlama, chain only |
| Fees including applications | $593M | $915M | DefiLlama, chain and apps |
| Revenue including applications | $147M | $169M | DefiLlama, chain and apps |
On the chain-only rows, Robinhood Chain is ahead, as in ARK’s report. On the rows that include applications, Ethereum is ahead. Neither set reproduces ARK’s two numbers exactly.
Memecoin apps generated most of the money
The applications on Robinhood Chain are mostly trading tools for memecoins. DefiLlama’s breakdown of third-quarter app revenue puts GMGN first with about $46 million, then Pons V2 with about $27 million, fomo Wallet with about $20 million and Uniswap V3 with about $14 million. CoinDesk, cited by Chainstack, found that GMGN, Pons and Uniswap produced 88% of app revenue on 30 August.
That is money earned by applications, not by the chain. It explains where the gas came from: bots and traders buying and selling new tokens in the busiest weeks. Tokenized stocks drew the headlines in July. Memecoins paid most of the fees.
Two weeks in September made the quarter
The chain’s own fees were small at first. DefiLlama shows about $3.6 million in July, in line with the figure Crypto Briefing reported, and $6.7 million in August. September brought $35.9 million, of which $32.8 million came in the first fifteen days. The busiest day, 4 September, produced about $6.0 million.
Since then the chain has gone quiet. Daily fees ran between about $34,000 and $62,000 from 12 to 21 October, and the 30 days to 21 October brought about $2.6 million. App revenue fell in step: $22.3 million over those 30 days against $91.5 million over the 30 days before, a drop of about 76%.
That fits ARK’s forecast of lower revenue once launch-quarter congestion pricing is gone. A fourth-quarter comparison with Ethereum is likely to look very different.
From testnet in February to mainnet in July
Robinhood opened a test network on 11 February 2026, according to Chainstack, and launched mainnet on 1 July. It presented the network at an event in London, with Uniswap and Pleiades deploying exchanges from launch, according to The Paypers. The chain uses ETH for gas and settles on Ethereum, which makes it a rollup in the Arbitrum family rather than a separate layer-1 network.
The launch came with new stock tokens and an on-chain lending product built on Morpho, The Defiant reported. Robinhood’s push into tokenized equities has drawn objections from some of the companies concerned, as our report on AMC rebuffing Robinhood over tokenized shares showed last week.
What it means for ETH holders and Robinhood users
For holders of ether, the ranking says less than it seems. A layer 2 that earns more than Ethereum in a quarter still pays Ethereum for data and settlement, uses ETH for gas and relies on Ethereum’s security. It does not burn its sequencer margin or pass it to validators. Whether that is good or bad for ETH is a debate the report does not settle. ETH traded near $2,410 at 10:14 UTC on 22 October, down 1.7% over 24 hours.
For people trading on Robinhood Chain, the practical point is cost. ARK ties its forecast of lower revenue to the end of congestion pricing, which means cheaper gas when the chain is busy. With no priority-fee auction, paying more does not buy a place at the front of the queue.
Robinhood’s Q3 results on 27 October are the next test
Robinhood reports its third-quarter results on Tuesday 27 October after the US market close, with a call at 2:00 PM PT (5:00 PM ET, 21:00 UTC), according to the company’s announcement of 1 October. It is not known whether Robinhood will give a figure for the chain’s revenue or only for crypto revenue earned in its apps.
A company figure would be the first number for Robinhood Chain that does not come from a third party. Until then the open points are ARK’s definition, whether the launch subsidy is counted, and whether Ethereum’s $41 million includes the burn. We will add ARK’s definition if the report page becomes readable.
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