Written by: Little Cake

Geoffrey Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, released his initial coverage report on ARB on September 15, giving a target price of $10 by the end of 2030. The current price of ARB is approximately $0.14, which implies a 70-fold upside potential.

After the announcement, ARB rose about 7% within 24 hours, and the core argument for this target price is only one: Robinhood Chain.

What Does Robinhood Chain Bring to Arbitrum?

Robinhood Chain was launched in July 2026, built on Arbitrum's Orbit technology. More than two months after its launch, it has become the largest single driver of revenue in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Kendrick provided a set of key numbers in the report: After the launch of Robinhood Chain, Arbitrum's monthly revenue run-rate reached approximately $5 million, more than five times higher than before the launch.

In the first 70 days, Robinhood Chain generated approximately $42.58 million in user transaction fees. Of this, $4.26 million flowed back to Arbitrum DAO. In July, Robinhood Chain paid about $360,000 in licensing fees, accounting for 35% of Arbitrum DAO's total revenue that month. By September 1, Robinhood Chain's daily transaction fee income reached $3.75 million, with a single day payment to Arbitrum of about $370,000.

Based on this, Kendrick concluded: “The launch of Robinhood Chain proves that Arbitrum has the potential to become the preferred infrastructure for traditional finance to move assets on-chain.” He expects that by the end of 2028, there will be $40 trillion of traditional assets tokenized, with Arbitrum taking an increasingly larger share in this process.

The price trajectory he provided: $0.50 by the end of 2026, $1.50 in 2027, $3.50 in 2028, $6.50 in 2029, and $10 by the end of 2030.

Money Flows into DAO Treasury, Not Your Wallet

However, the most noteworthy aspect of this report is precisely the risk factors that Kendrick himself listed.

ARB holders currently have no direct claim on Arbitrum's revenue.

The revenue distribution structure of Robinhood Chain is as follows: 10% of the net protocol revenue from Robinhood Chain goes into the Arbitrum ecosystem. Of this, 8% goes into the DAO Treasury, and 2% goes into the developer fund. The remaining 90% belongs to Robinhood itself.

In other words, when Robinhood Chain generated $42.58 million in transaction fees, approximately $4.26 million flowed into the Arbitrum ecosystem. But this money goes into the address of the DAO Treasury and is not distributed in any form to ARB token holders.

The current function of the ARB token is governance voting. Holding ARB allows participation in voting on DAO proposals, but does not entitle holders to dividends from protocol revenue, buybacks, or destruction proceeds.

This means ARB currently sits in an awkward middle ground: it has "ecosystem revenue" (the DAO Treasury has real cash inflows) but still lacks "holder cash flow" (there is no mechanism to transmit treasury value to token prices).

Standard Chartered's 70-times target price essentially bets that the DAO will eventually establish some mechanism to convey treasury value to token holders through governance voting. Possible paths include:

• Buyback + Burn: The DAO uses treasury funds to buy ARB from the market and burn it, reducing circulation. Similar to BNB's quarterly burn mechanism.
• Staking Rewards: Establishing an ARB staking pool, distributing part of the treasury income as staking rewards to locked ARB holders.
• Revenue Dividends: Directly proportionately distributing treasury income to ARB holders (this path is the most sensitive under the regulatory environment in the United States because it easily triggers "security" classification).

None of these three paths have currently been approved through a DAO proposal, investing in ARB equals betting on a "future governance event."

The Overlooked Detail: The True User Profile of Robinhood Chain

Kendrick's long-term argument is built on the narrative of "tokenization of traditional financial assets." However, in reality, the current early growth of Robinhood Chain largely comes from meme coin launching platforms and trading applications, rather than tokenized stocks or traditional assets.

Meme coins also generate real transaction fee income, but there is a dislocation between this and Standard Chartered's long-term narrative of "Arbitrum becoming the preferred infrastructure for TradFi."

If Robinhood Chain's revenue relies on meme coin trading volumes in the long term, then its revenue stability will be constrained by the meme coin cycle, which is a source of income with volatility far higher than tokenized securities.