Standard Chartered says layer-2 network Arbitrum could emerge as one of the digital asset industry’s top performers through 2030 as traditional financial firms move more assets onchain, giving the network a potentially lucrative revenue source far beyond anything crypto-native activity alone could deliver.
In a note shared with Cointelegraph, Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, argued that Arbitrum’s economics offer considerable upside because the network receives 10 percent of the net protocol revenue generated by companies building on it. The first major example is Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 network developed by the online brokerage on Arbitrum’s Orbit stack.
Robinhood Chain has already changed the math
According to Kendrick, Robinhood Chain has already materially changed Arbitrum’s revenue picture. At its current run rate, Arbitrum is expected to generate roughly 5 million USD in revenue in September, more than five times its level before Robinhood Chain launched in July. That flow comes through Arbitrum’s take-rate arrangement with chains built on its technology, effectively turning the network into an infrastructure landlord for institutional layer-2 deployments.
Kendrick expects those economics to support a steady rise in Arbitrum’s native ARB token over the coming years, reaching as high as 10 USD by 2030. From current levels, that would represent a roughly 70-fold increase, far exceeding Standard Chartered’s projected returns for Bitcoin and Ether over the same period.
ARB was valued at around 0.14 USD on Tuesday, having gained 86 percent over the past month, according to CoinGecko data, making it one of the strongest large-cap performers of the late summer rally.
The tokenization thesis
StanChart’s bullish case is heavily influenced by the growth of tokenized real-world assets, which have reached a cumulative value of nearly 39 billion USD, according to RWA.xyz data. Kendrick reiterated the bank’s forecast that tokenized assets will reach 4 trillion USD by the end of 2028 as banks and asset managers bring more assets onchain.
The bank sees Arbitrum as a primary beneficiary of that shift because it provides the infrastructure for companies to build their own layer-2 networks and captures a share of the revenue those networks generate. Every new Robinhood-style deployment, whether from a brokerage, a bank or a payments giant, adds a stream of fee income that accrues to Arbitrum without the network having to win retail users directly.
Standard Chartered has cited the same tokenization growth in its bullish outlook for Chainlink and for the broader decentralized finance sector. The through-line across the bank’s research is that institutional adoption, not retail speculation, will be the dominant driver of the next cycle, and the infrastructure providers that monetize it, oracles, layer-2 stacks and custody rails, are positioned to capture outsized value.
Risks to the call
Kendrick was candid about the vulnerabilities in the projection. The biggest risks to the ARB price target include “a slower-than-expected pace of asset tokenization and more competition from alternate blockchains,” he wrote in the note.
Both risks are real. Tokenization forecasts have a history of slipping to the right, and institutional timelines for bringing securities, funds and commodities onchain depend heavily on regulatory clarity that has been slow to arrive. Meanwhile, Arbitrum faces intensifying competition from other layer-2 ecosystems, including Base, which has captured significant retail and developer mindshare, as well as appchains and alternative tech stacks that do not share revenue with a host network at all.
There is also a governance dimension. Arbitrum DAO recently moved to release roughly 71 million USD in ETH frozen since the 2024 Kelp exploit, a vote that passed with about 90 percent support, an example of the protocol’s ability to resolve legacy issues through onchain governance rather than litigation.
A bank calling altcoin upside
The note is striking less for its optimism than for its source. A decade ago, global banks published research on Bitcoin with derision; today, Standard Chartered is publishing multi-year price targets for layer-2 governance tokens and framing them as infrastructure plays on a 4-trillion-dollar tokenization wave. Whether Kendrick’s 10 USD target proves prescient or premature, the fact that it exists at all marks how thoroughly the institutional narrative has shifted.
For ARB holders, the immediate question is whether September’s revenue run rate, five times pre-Robinhood levels, marks a step change or a honeymoon. StanChart is betting on the former.
Market snapshot at publication: Bitcoin trades near 75,825 USD, Ethereum near 2,404 USD, and Solana near 98 USD, according to CoinGecko data.
Kendrick calling for ARB at 10 while it just did 86 percent in a month feels bold, but the 10 percent cut of net protocol revenue from Orbit chains like Robinhood is the real story. That is a toll booth model.
4 trillion in tokenized assets by 2028 is the kind of number you screenshot so you can laugh at it later. Bold bank research either way.
people laughed at the 4 trillion figure in 2021 too and BlackRock ended up running a tokenized fund anyway. the number is silly, the direction isnt
roughly 5M USD revenue in September, five times what Arbitrum did before Robinhood Chain went live in July. and the banks are only now waking up to it
That 10 percent cut of net protocol revenue from Orbit chains is the detail everyone skips. An actual fee stream flowing to the network instead of pure speculation, that is rare in this market.
a 10 dollar ARB target for 2030 is bold when most L2 tokens just bleed against ETH for years. the take rate story is real tho, Kendrick is early for once
based, but show me a buyback or burn. revenue flowing to the network means nothing for ARB holders if it never touches the token
thats the bull case tho. the DAO votes a buyback the second revenue prints a few more 5M months and the token re-rates overnight. thats literally the 2025 playbook
the dao already has buyback votes queued tho. once a few more 5M months print the proposal passes and your point ages in a week
kendrick early for once is doing a lot of work in that sentence lol. he did call the 2024 etf flows tho so maybe give it a chance
86 percent in a month and standard chartered drops a 10 dollar target. taking some profits into this, banks are usually last to the party
Robinhood Chain already live on Orbit and StanChart doing the revenue math on it. If every serious Orbit launch pays the 10 percent cut, ARB basically owns a toll road. 39 billion in RWAs today, 4 trillion projected, big if true.
5M September revenue off one Orbit chain is nice, but StanChart valuing ARB on a 2030 horizon means they expect ten more Robinhoods. One is not a trend yet.