Arbitrum and Solana co-founders clash over Robinhood’s on-chain fee model: Solana’s Toly questions frontends should not profit from network congestion, while Arbitrum’s Steven pushes back, stating they aim to act as landlords rather than tenants.

Arbitrum founder Steven Goldfeder and Solana co-founder Toly have clashed over the fee model of Robinhood Chain. As an Ethereum layer-2 built on Arbitrum Orbit, Robinhood Chain allocates 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem: 8% to the DAO treasury and 2% to the development fund, with Robinhood retaining roughly 90% for itself. Recently, fees on Robinhood Chain have surged, with average per-transaction gas hitting around $0.4 at one point, and daily fees reaching millions of dollars—far higher than Solana’s typical ultra-low transaction costs. Solana co-founder Toly argues that the 10% split paid to Arbitrum is more than four times the equivalent transaction cost on Solana. If Robinhood Chain had been built on Solana, Robinhood could have offered users full gas waivers. Toly claims frontends should profit from their own apps, not from "network congestion-driven price hikes" on the underlying layer, calling Robinhood Chain’s model "brain dead." He asked Goldfeder: Why shouldn’t apps charge users directly? Does scaling and reducing congestion have to come at the cost of revenue? Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder countered that Toly’s view is "way off base." On Arbitrum, Robinhood keeps 90% of gas fees; on Solana, base layer fees go to validators or the network, so Robinhood would retain zero—meaning it would have to cover full gas waivers out of its own pocket. Goldfeder said Robinhood chose Arbitrum to act as a "landlord" rather than a "tenant," controlling its sequencer and keeping most fees for itself.