Standard Chartered Sets $10 Arbitrum Target as Robinhood Chain Drives Revenue
Standard Chartered backs Arbitrum on TradFi growth
Standard Chartered has started covering Arbitrum's ARB token with a price target of $10 by the end of 2030. The bank views Arbitrum as a blockchain built primarily for traditional finance companies to use.
Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, called Arbitrum "the blockchain for TradFi" in a note released Tuesday. The forecast assumes that as tokenized assets and stock tokens grow on Arbitrum-based chains like Robinhood Chain, the ARB token will capture more value over time.
Revenue model behind the $10 target
- ARB is currently trading at $0.137, with a market cap of $916 million.
- Standard Chartered forecasts ARB at $0.50 by end-2026, $1.50 by end-2027, $3.50 by end-2028, $6.50 by end-2029, and $10.00 by end-2030.
- The bank values Arbitrum using a multiple of 1.3 times annualized three-month ecosystem fees.
- That multiple is far lower than Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche, which trade at multiples up to 25 times higher, according to the note.
- ARB has no burn mechanism or buyback program; the token is purely a governance token.
Robinhood Chain is now the biggest revenue driver
Robinhood Chain launched on July 1 and has quickly become the largest fee source for Arbitrum's ecosystem. Over the past 30 days, Robinhood Chain collected $37.31 million in fees, compared with $454,175 from Arbitrum's own chain.
Under the Arbitrum Expansion Program, chains built on Arbitrum's technology pay a fee equal to 10% of their net protocol revenue. Of that, 8% goes to the Arbitrum DAO and 2% goes to developers. The bank assumes Robinhood Chain will generate roughly $2 million per day in fees to justify its September revenue estimate of $5 million.
However, fees on Robinhood Chain have fallen sharply since peaking on September 4 at $6.04 million. They have dropped 93% since then, with the last seven days averaging under $1 million per day.
What the bank is betting on
Standard Chartered's forecast rests on three projections about tokenization:
- Total tokenized assets, including stablecoins and real-world assets, would grow from about $340 billion to $4 trillion by the end of 2028.
- The share of those assets deployed in DeFi would rise from 3.5% to 30% by 2030.
- Tokenized equities would reach $750 billion by the end of 2028, a 250-fold increase from current levels.
The bank also noted that Arbitrum holds around $100 million in treasury reserves deployed into DeFi, earning roughly $200,000 to $250,000 per month in interest.
Risks and uncertainties
The note listed several risks that could affect the forecast. Tokenization could grow more slowly than expected. Other blockchains could capture more traditional finance activity. The ARB token still has no direct way to accrue value from the fees it generates.
The bank also flagged regulatory uncertainty, pointing to the stalled Clarity Act in the Senate and pending SEC guidelines. It noted that the US Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is pursuing its own tokenization work, making it difficult to predict which chain will ultimately dominate.
Additionally, 92.3% of ARB's total supply has already vested, with the final tranche due in March 2027. The gap between the fees collected by the Arbitrum ecosystem and the value that reaches token holders has been a ongoing debate within the DAO.
Why this matters for the industry
Standard Chartered's coverage marks one of the first major bank reports to explicitly frame Arbitrum as a infrastructure play for traditional finance. If tokenization of stocks and other assets grows as the bank expects, chains like Arbitrum that sit between traditional finance and DeFi could see rising revenue — even if the token itself does not directly benefit today.
The report also comes as the bank has issued 2030 price targets for other DeFi tokens, including $100 for UNI, $200 for LINK, and $3,500 for AAVE.
What the numbers say
At the current price of $0.137, hitting the bank's $10 target would require roughly a 70-fold increase over four years. The valuation relies heavily on Robinhood Chain maintaining high fee revenue and on broader tokenization growth materializing across the traditional finance sector.
ARB is up 87% over the past 30 days but down 21% over the past week, reflecting recent volatility around the Robinhood Chain revenue trend.
