Standard Chartered Sets $10 2030 Target for Arbitrum (ARB)

Standard Chartered Targets $10 by 2030

Standard Chartered has opened formal research coverage of Arbitrum (ARB), the token of Ethereum's busiest Layer 2 scaling network, setting a year-end 2030 target of $10 — roughly 66 times the token's level of about $0.15 when the note landed, per CoinGecko price data. The memo, prepared by the bank's digital assets research team under Geoff Kendrick, lays out a staged climb: $0.50 by the end of 2026, $1.50 in 2027, $3.50 in 2028 and $6.50 in 2029 before the terminal figure. Kendrick's desk expects ARB to outperform both of the largest crypto assets across that window; the same note projects Bitcoin at $100,000 this year and $500,000 by 2030, and Ethereum at $4,000 this year and $40,000 by 2030. The team launched comparable 2030 coverage of Chainlink last month at a $200 target, alongside Uniswap and other DeFi names. What the bank says separates the Arbitrum call is a revenue stream that switched on in July: any chain built with Arbitrum technology and settled outside Arbitrum One or Nova under the Arbitrum Expansion Program must return 10% of its net protocol revenue. Kendrick positions Arbitrum as institutional infrastructure for banks and asset managers moving instruments on-chain, and the coverage's core assumption is tokenized assets growing from roughly $340 billion today to $4 trillion by end-2028, with tokenized equities alone at $750 billion. He cited DTCC work on tokenized equities and pending US market-structure legislation as positive developments not yet realized, and expects more traditional-finance chains at the same fee tier — a dynamic he argues should re-rate ARB toward layer-1 valuations. The memo states the bank's risks plainly: tokenization could move slower than modeled, rivals could take share, and ARB captures little direct value from the fees crossing the network. Kendrick's framing: digital assets are shifting from a phase where revenue does not matter to one where it matters intensely.

Robinhood Chain Drives the Fee Engine

The fee engine behind the target is already visible in on-chain data. Robinhood Chain, the brokerage's tokenization-focused network built on Arbitrum's stack, went live on July 1 and quickly became the Expansion Program's flagship client. On September 1 it paid $3.75 million in fees, briefly putting the two-month-old network ahead of Ethereum mainnet and Base for the day, with daily fees peaking at $6.04 million on September 4 — a flow that included Robinhood Chain's 70-day payouts of $4.26 million against $42.58 million in total revenue, as our earlier reporting tracked. The pace has cooled since: on-chain data shows Robinhood Chain fees at $448,616 on September 14, though the first two weeks of the month still averaged $2.8 million per day, which the bank reads as roughly $5 million in Expansion Program fees for September. Even at the slower rate, Arbitrum's monthly revenue now runs more than five times above its pre-launch level. Under the program's split, 8 of the 10 points flow to the DAO treasury and 2 to the developer guild — about $1.32 million over 30 days by early September. The Arbitrum Foundation's H1 2026 report widens the lens: the Arbitrum DAO earned $6.19 million across four revenue lines in the first half of the year, and July license fees under the Expansion Program made up 35% of the DAO's monthly income. Activity backs the thesis as well — the foundation counts 478 million transactions for the half-year and monthly stablecoin transfer volume above $70 billion, with Arbitrum standing out among networks carrying tokenized real-world assets. An earlier Robinhood Chain revenue surge had already helped fuel a 120% rally in ARB, as our previous rally coverage noted; traders weighing entries can compare venues in our guide to the best crypto exchanges. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

Treasury Fees, Not Holder Yield

Read together, the two threads form one arc in our Arbitrum research coverage: a bank-grade valuation case for ARB built on real fees rather than narrative. Yet the note's own caveat is the one our desk watches closest — Expansion Program revenue lands in the DAO treasury to fund operations and does not flow directly to ARB holders, leaving the link between network revenue and the token's tokenomics loose. Whether that link tightens as more traditional-finance chains adopt the stack will decide if a re-rate toward layer-1-style valuations is justified. Until it does, the $10 target remains a scenario, not a base case for holders.