Standard Chartered expects Arbitrum to deliver higher returns than bitcoin and ether by 2030.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain outlet, reported on Sept. 15 local time that Standard Chartered sees expanding asset tokenisation in traditional finance changing Arbitrum’s revenue structure and potentially lifting the price of the ARB token sharply.

The core rationale is Arbitrum’s revenue-sharing model. Geoffrey Kendrick (제프 켄드릭), Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, pointed to a structure in which Arbitrum takes 10 percent of net protocol revenue paid by companies that build services on the network. Robinhood Chain, developed by online brokerage Robinhood, was presented as the first case showing this structure working in practice.

Kendrick said Robinhood Chain has already changed Arbitrum’s effective economic structure. If the current trend continues, Arbitrum is expected to generate $5 million in revenue in September, more than five times July’s level before Robinhood Chain launched.

Kendrick also expects ARB could rise as high as $10 by 2030. ARB is currently about $0.14, up 86 percent over the past month. If Standard Chartered’s view is realised, that implies about 70 times upside from current levels.

The forecast rests on an expansion of tokenisation in real-world assets (RWA). RWA.xyz data puts the cumulative value of tokenised RWAs at about $39 billion. Standard Chartered also reaffirmed its previous view that tokenised assets could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028 as banks and asset managers move more assets on-chain.

Arbitrum provides infrastructure that allows companies to build their own layer-2 networks. As traditional financial firms expand blockchain-based networks, Arbitrum could secure revenue sources beyond native cryptocurrency activity. Standard Chartered said this is why it sees Arbitrum as a long-term beneficiary.

It also flagged risks. Kendrick cited the biggest risks to the ARB price outlook as a slower-than-expected pace of asset tokenisation and intensifying competition with alternative blockchains. That means the pace of Arbitrum’s revenue growth could change if tokenisation falls short of expectations or companies choose other chains.

Standard Chartered also cited tokenisation growth as the basis for a bullish view on Chainlink (LINK) and decentralised finance (DeFi) more broadly. The Arbitrum case is emerging as a testbed showing how traditional financial firms moving on-chain can change a specific network’s revenue model. The key questions going forward are whether more financial firms build their own layer-2 networks and how much of that flow Arbitrum absorbs.