Standard Chartered Eyes Arbitrum (ARB) for a 68x Surge to $10 by 2030, Driven by a Pivotal Business Model Shift

Standard Chartered, a leading global banking institution, has identified Ethereum Layer 2 solution Arbitrum as a prime candidate for a monumental valuation re-rating within the cryptocurrency market. The bank’s inaugural research coverage on Arbitrum’s native token, ARB, projects an ambitious target of $10 by the end of 2030.

This forecast represents an extraordinary potential gain of nearly 68 times its current price of approximately $0.146. Intriguingly, Standard Chartered suggests that ARB’s returns could even eclipse those of crypto giants Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period, signaling a profound belief in its long-term trajectory.

However, Standard Chartered’s bullish thesis isn’t merely predicated on a resurgence in Layer 2 transaction volumes. Instead, it hinges on a fundamental transformation in Arbitrum’s strategic direction: evolving from a standalone blockchain into a sophisticated platform capable of “exporting blockchain infrastructure” to other financial institutions and consistently generating revenue from these deployments.

A Decade of Growth: Standard Chartered’s ARB Price Roadmap

Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, outlined a detailed annual price progression for ARB in the bank’s report:

• End of 2026: $0.50
• End of 2027: $1.50
• End of 2028: $3.50
• End of 2029: $6.50
• End of 2030: $10.00

Prior to the report’s release, ARB traded between $0.13 and $0.14, initially implying a “70x” upside. Following a recent rebound to around $0.1465, with a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $409 million and a market capitalization nearing $980 million (according to CoinMarketCap), the $10 target still translates to roughly a 68-fold increase.

“Standard Chartered’s valuation logic moves beyond the traditional ‘more Arbitrum One usage equals ARB price increase’ narrative. It positions Robinhood Chain as the seminal example of Arbitrum’s business model undergoing a significant transformation.”

Robinhood Chain: A Blueprint for Arbitrum’s Revenue Generation

The core of Standard Chartered’s re-evaluation lies in Arbitrum’s innovative revenue-sharing model, exemplified by the Robinhood Chain. Built on Arbitrum’s robust technology stack, Robinhood Chain’s integration under the Arbitrum Expansion Program mandates that external chains choosing to settle outside Arbitrum One or Nova contribute approximately 10% of their net protocol revenue back to the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Since its official launch in July, Robinhood Chain has demonstrated rapid revenue growth. Standard Chartered estimates that, at its current operational pace, Arbitrum’s revenue from this mechanism alone could reach roughly $5 million in September, catapulting its total monthly income to more than five times its pre-Robinhood Chain levels.

This isn’t purely speculative. Recent unaudited financial data from the Arbitrum DAO indicates substantial earnings from Arbitrum One transaction fees, Timeboost, Expansion Program licensing, and fund management. By July, licensing fees already constituted about 35% of the DAO’s monthly revenue, showcasing the immediate impact of this new model.

Robinhood Chain’s individual performance further underscores this trend. In early September, its daily on-chain transaction fees peaked at approximately $3.75 million. Bernstein later estimated daily transaction fees to be between $2 million and $4 million, accumulating to around $33 million over a 15-day period, with roughly 10% directly linked to Arbitrum’s technology revenue-sharing agreement.

This shift implies that Arbitrum’s future valuation will increasingly be driven not just by the Total Value Locked (TVL) on Arbitrum One, but by its success in attracting enterprises, brokerages, and financial institutions to leverage its technology for building their own dedicated chains.

Arbitrum’s Robust Fundamentals and the Asset Tokenization Wave

Despite this forward-looking strategy, Arbitrum One maintains a strong foundational presence as one of Ethereum’s largest Rollups. L2Beat data reports its Total Value Secured at approximately $10.7 billion, solidifying its position as a Stage 1 Rollup.

While narrower DeFi TVL metrics from DefiLlama show around $1.39 billion, Arbitrum also boasts a stablecoin market capitalization of approximately $4.1 billion, handling about 1.94 million daily transactions, with 100,000 active addresses, and a 24-hour perpetual futures trading volume of roughly $2.17 billion. (It’s important to note that different metrics define “value” differently and should not be directly compared.)

Standard Chartered’s true conviction lies in the impending “asset tokenization” era. The bank projects the global tokenized asset market to surge from tens of billions of dollars today to a staggering $4 trillion by the end of 2028, with tokenized stocks potentially reaching $750 billion. Should traditional financial institutions increasingly opt for Arbitrum’s technology to construct their proprietary chains, Arbitrum stands to continually capture revenue from these burgeoning network activities.

The $10 Target: A Trillion-Dollar Valuation Challenge

Achieving a $10 ARB price is an ambitious undertaking. With a total supply of 10 billion tokens and approximately 6.678 billion currently unlocked, a $10 valuation would imply a market capitalization of around $66.8 billion. If nearly all tokens are in circulation by then, its fully diluted valuation would approach $100 billion.

This projection fundamentally assumes that the market will eventually perceive ARB not merely as a governance token, but as the native asset of a sustainable, revenue-generating blockchain infrastructure platform.

This represents the most significant variable in Standard Chartered’s forecast. Currently, ARB primarily functions as a governance token, with network gas fees paid in ETH. The direct mechanism for increased protocol revenue to translate into long-term ARB holder value — akin to stock buybacks or explicit cash flow distributions — remains undefined. Standard Chartered itself highlights this “lack of a direct value accumulation mechanism for ARB,” slower-than-anticipated asset tokenization, and competition from other blockchains as principal risks.

“Beyond the question of whether ARB can truly reach $10, the more critical observation will be another metric: how many large financial institutions, post-Robinhood, are willing to pay for Arbitrum’s technology? The emergence of a second and third major TradFi-dedicated chain would truly validate Arbitrum’s valuation shift from a ‘Layer 2 governance token’ to the ‘on-chain financial infrastructure’ that Standard Chartered is now betting on.”