Robinhood acts as the landlord, Ethereum as the security: An Arbitrum (ARB) Layer 2 has pushed mainnet settlement fees to nearly zero.

According to DefiLlama data, amid the meme token hype, Robinhood Chain generated $2.61 million in protocol revenue yesterday, with a 7-day total of $22.45 million. As an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) built on Arbitrum Orbit, Robinhood Chain is required to allocate 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Over the past seven days, Arbitrum, which provides the underlying tech stack, has received around $2.48 million, split between its DAO and developer fund. Meanwhile, Uniswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Robinhood, brought in $609,234 in protocol revenue yesterday, with a 7-day total of $3.36 million. Notably, Ethereum mainnet, as the settlement layer, saw negligible revenue: per growthepie data, Robinhood Chain paid just $1,270 in settlement fees to Ethereum mainnet yesterday, totaling $3,550 over the past seven days. This has sparked widespread debate in the crypto community. Prominent DeFi researcher Ignas pointed out that this structure—where platforms rake in massive profits while the settlement layer receives almost nothing—raises questions about whether this poses a problem for Ethereum. He noted that Ethereum may currently be using low fees to onboard TradFi players into its ecosystem, planning to increase charges once user migration costs become sufficiently high. If Ethereum’s official roadmap does include a strategy of first attracting a large number of L2s, then monetizing Layer 1 (L1) after switching costs rise, this could be positive for ETH, though such an approach is not currently outlined in Ethereum’s roadmap. Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfede responded that Robinhood chose Arbitrum to act as a landlord, not a tenant: controlling its own sequencer and keeping most fees for itself.