Solana and Arbitrum Co-founders Clash Over Robinhood Chain Fee Model

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder have entered into a public debate regarding the fee economics of Robinhood Chain.

The discussion has intensified against the backdrop of rising fees on Robinhood Chain, where the average transaction cost has reached $0.40 — more than 100 times higher than on Solana and over twice as high as on Ethereum.

Yakovenko: Robinhood Could Make Transactions Free

Anatoly Yakovenko pointed to Robinhood Chain's revenue-sharing model, stating that the 10% revenue share the broker pays to Arbitrum would be sufficient to fully cover transaction fees on Solana.

"What's funny is that the 10% revenue share for Arbitrum would cover Solana's transaction fees four times over, and Robinhood could completely eliminate gas fees for users," wrote the Solana co-founder.

Under the licensing terms, Robinhood Chain allocates 10% of the network's net revenue to Arbitrum. Of this amount, 8% goes to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, and another 2% funds the Developer Guild.

Yakovenko believes Robinhood Chain could shift transaction costs to users at the application level while reducing operational expenses by utilizing cheaper underlying infrastructure.

"They can charge X basis points on the frontend and lower their costs by using a cheaper backend. There's no point in tying revenue to backend throughput," he stated.

According to Yakovenko, frontends typically charge between 50 and 80 basis points. He cited Uniswap as an example, which, along with Relay, is among the busiest applications in networks.

Goldfeder: It's More Profitable for Robinhood to Be a 'Landlord' Than a 'Tenant'

Steven Goldfeder rejected Yakovenko's argument, emphasizing that it accounts for costs but ignores Robinhood Chain's revenue sources.

"I have a lot of respect for @toly [Anatoly Yakovenko], but this is a nonsense thought. On Arbitrum, Robinhood keeps 90% of the gas fees. On Solana, it would get 0%, and any gas fees it subsidized would have to be paid out of its own pocket. Robinhood chose Arbitrum to be a landlord, not a tenant," wrote Goldfeder.

In his view, the issue is that a significant portion of the fees are generated by activity that doesn't even pass through Robinhood's frontend. Therefore, if the company were merely a user of someone else's blockchain infrastructure, it wouldn't earn revenue from such ancillary activity, even if Robinhood attracted those users to the network.

Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann joined the discussion. He noted that Robinhood not only could potentially provide the service for free but is actually profiting from it.

Recall that the debate arose amid rapid growth in activity on Robinhood Chain. Notably, on September 4th, the daily trading volume on decentralized exchanges in the network exceeded $1.72 billion, with fees reaching $24.5 million. By September 6th, activity had somewhat subsided: fees dropped to $9.62 million at the time of writing. Over the past 30 days, Robinhood Chain's fee figure stood at $188.16 million. Weekly fee growth reached 231%.