Robinhood Chain weighs Arbitrum fee-based trade priority for tokenized assets

Robinhood Chain is evaluating a transaction-ordering system that would let users pay to move trades ahead of others, CoinDesk reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The chain, a Layer-2 network built for tokenized real-world financial assets, orders transactions first-come, first-served today and has not used Arbitrum's earlier priority tool, Timeboost, according to the report.

Arbitrum supplies the infrastructure behind Robinhood Chain, though CoinDesk notes the ordering system under review is not affiliated with the chain.

Arbitrum's newer Priority Gas Auctions model lets traders pay higher fees to have individual transactions processed ahead of others. Until Sept. 24, Timeboost gave users a 200-millisecond priority-sequencing advantage; that day, Arbitrum replaced it with Priority Gas Auctions, per the report. CoinDesk gives no decision timeline. Robinhood declined to comment, and Off-Chain Labs, the developer behind Arbitrum, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, CoinDesk said.

Since launching its Ethereum-compatible network in July, Robinhood Chain has entered the top 10 blockchains ranked by total locked value, per the report.

Robinhood's brokerage business has long made money from payment for order flow, in which market makers pay brokers to route customer trades to them, CoinDesk notes. The report says that business is now melding with a 24/7 onchain model for distributing tokenized stocks. A priority fee would charge at the execution layer for faster processing, which the report says can help professional firms compete for trading opportunities that disappear in fractions of a second.

CoinDesk presents fee-based ordering as a defense against frontrunning on transparent chains, known as MEV, and as a way to level the field for firms seeking faster trading connections.

A Dune estimate cited in our September reporting put tokenized real-world asset supply above $34 billion in 2026, and the value of individual-stock token holdings grew ninefold over the past year.

The reporting does not specify which trades would qualify for priority or what fee levels would apply.