Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder clashed publicly over Robinhood Chain’s fee economics, with Goldfeder responding on Sept. 5, 2026. The dispute matters because it addresses whether Robinhood’s current revenue-sharing model outweighs the potential savings from using cheaper underlying infrastructure.

The debate intensified as Robinhood Chain’s average transaction cost reached $0.40, more than 100 times the cost on Solana and more than twice the cost on Ethereum.

Yakovenko argues Robinhood could cover user fees

Yakovenko said the 10% share of net revenue that Robinhood Chain pays to Arbitrum would be sufficient to cover transaction fees on Solana.

“What’s funny is that the 10% rev share to arb would have covered the solana tx fees 4 times over and rh could have given a totally gas less experience to users,” Yakovenko wrote.

Under the licensing terms described in the source, Robinhood Chain sends Arbitrum 10% of the network’s net revenue. Of that amount, 8% goes to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2% funds the Developer Guild.

Yakovenko argued that Robinhood could charge users through its app while reducing costs by relying on less expensive back-end infrastructure.

“They can charge X bips at the front end and lower the cost of revenue by using a cheaper backend. It makes no sense to tie the revenue to the capacity of the backend,” he said.

According to Yakovenko, front ends typically charge between 50 and 80 basis points. He cited Uniswap and Relay as among the most heavily used applications across networks.

Goldfeder says Robinhood benefits from owning the infrastructure

Goldfeder rejected Yakovenko’s argument, saying it considered Robinhood’s costs but overlooked the revenue the company receives from network activity.

“I have a ton of respect for @toly but this is a ridiculous take. On Arbitrum, Robinhood keeps 90% of gas fees. On Solana they would retain 0 and any gas fees they subsidized would come out of pocket.

Robinhood chose Arbitrum so they could be a landlord and not a tenant,” Goldfeder wrote on Sept. 5.

Goldfeder said a significant share of fees comes from activity outside Robinhood’s front end. In his view, Robinhood would not receive revenue from that activity if it operated only as a user of another blockchain’s infrastructure, even if it had brought those users to the network.

Gnosis co-founder Martin Koeppelmann also joined the discussion, saying Robinhood could provide the service for free while effectively making money from it.

Robinhood Chain activity and fees

The dispute followed a sharp increase in activity on Robinhood Chain. Daily decentralized-exchange trading volume exceeded $1.72 billion on Sept. 4, while fee revenue reached $24.5 million.

By Sept. 6, activity had eased and fees had fallen to $9.62 million at the time of writing. Robinhood Chain recorded $188.16 million in fees over the preceding 30 days, while weekly fee growth reached 231%.

Source: Incrypted