This Little-Known Altcoin Powering Robinhood's New Blockchain Just Soared By 45%. Is ARB a Buy, Sell, or Hold?

Key Points Arbitrum is climbing rapidly thanks to Robinhood licensing its blockchain technology. Robinhood's new network will likely continue to deliver income to Arbitrum for years to come. 10 stocks we like better than Arbitrum › Arbitrum (CRYPTO: ARB) gained 45% in the last week, marking the most exciting stretch for the coin in at least the last couple of years. The impulse for the move was Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) launching its own blockchain on July 1, running on Arbitrum's technology. Activity on Robinhood's chain thus kicks Arbitrum some fees. If past bouts of speculative activity in the crypto market are anything to go by, the new chain's heyday won't last forever. Its faucet of fees might taper off eventually, leaving Arbitrum with little else to rely on for growth. So does all of this make Arbitrum a buy, a sell, or a hold? Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue » Image source: Getty Images. Robinhood's chain brings in more in a day than Arbitrum does in a month Robinhood Chain took in $4.3 million of revenue, meaning that the fees it kept after paying the cost of posting its data to Ethereum , on Sept. 3, were the most of any network tracked on the crypto data aggregator DefiLlama. Arbitrum's own network collected $365,060 in fees, which is the gross amount users paid to transact on it, during all of August. That's less than the $1.6 million in fees it brought in for that same period a year ago. With the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains built on its technology that settle their transactions elsewhere -- such as the Ethereum mainnet, as Robinhood's network does -- must pay 10% of their net chain profit back to Arbitrum. Eight percent of the profits are sent to the Arbitrum decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) dedicated to the network's governance, and the remaining 2% are sent to a developer "guild" that works on developing new features. That means activity on Robinhood's ledger results in value accruing to the coffers of those two entities, both of which could credibly devise new policies and new tech that would increase the value of Arbitrum's token. The catch is that holders of Arbitrum's token don't actually have any direct exposure to upside. There's no mechanism like a buyback to constrain the token's supply over time, pushing up the value of the remaining tokens in circulation. Nor does it pay dividends or grant holders any rights, save for the right to vote on proposals advanced by the governance group. So is Arbitrum a buy, sell, or hold? This is one of the few cases where I am in favor of buying the coin, despite its lack of holder-friendly policies that link returns to network (or, in this case, technology) utilization. In short, Arbitrum is now connected to a cash spigot coming from Robinhood's chain. Robinhood is an independent business with a strong incentive to continue building out its crypto network to boost its stock price . Arbitrum doesn't need to do anything to continue reaping the benefits of having licensed its technology, though it will now have more capital with which to further develop that technology. That means Arbitrum, which until recently was just a faded also-ran altcoin, could now become formidable. It's worth buying a small allocation of this coin, preferably once the immediate hype has ebbed a bit. Should you buy stock in Arbitrum right now? Before you buy stock in Arbitrum, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Arbitrum wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $421,997 !* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,413,876 !* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 978 % — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor , and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of September 5, 2026. Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

Arbitrum is climbing rapidly thanks to Robinhood licensing its blockchain technology.

Robinhood's new network will likely continue to deliver income to Arbitrum for years to come.

Arbitrum (CRYPTO: ARB) gained 45% in the last week, marking the most exciting stretch for the coin in at least the last couple of years. The impulse for the move was Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) launching its own blockchain on July 1, running on Arbitrum's technology. Activity on Robinhood's chain thus kicks Arbitrum some fees.

If past bouts of speculative activity in the crypto market are anything to go by, the new chain's heyday won't last forever. Its faucet of fees might taper off eventually, leaving Arbitrum with little else to rely on for growth. So does all of this make Arbitrum a buy, a sell, or a hold?

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »

Robinhood Chain took in $4.3 million of revenue, meaning that the fees it kept after paying the cost of posting its data to Ethereum , on Sept. 3, were the most of any network tracked on the crypto data aggregator DefiLlama. Arbitrum's own network collected $365,060 in fees, which is the gross amount users paid to transact on it, during all of August. That's less than the $1.6 million in fees it brought in for that same period a year ago.

With the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains built on its technology that settle their transactions elsewhere -- such as the Ethereum mainnet, as Robinhood's network does -- must pay 10% of their net chain profit back to Arbitrum. Eight percent of the profits are sent to the Arbitrum decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) dedicated to the network's governance, and the remaining 2% are sent to a developer "guild" that works on developing new features.