Arbitrum co-founder explains licensing trick that prevents Robinhood Chain from forking code and keeping all the fees

Most open-source software operates on a simple premise: take the code, do whatever you want. Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder decided that was a terrible business model for Layer 2 infrastructure, and built a licensing structure that makes forking the code without paying up effectively pointless. The mechanism is called “community source” licensing, and it creates an economic leash on any chain that uses Arbitrum’s Orbit/Nitro stack but settles outside of Arbitrum One or Nova. Those chains must send 10% of their net revenue back to the ecosystem. Of that 10%, eight percentage points flow to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, which is governed by ARB token holders, and the remaining two points go to the Developer Guild. Why Robinhood Chain is the perfect test case Robinhood Chain launched its mainnet on July 1, 2026, operating as a dedicated Ethereum Layer 2 that settles directly to Ethereum rather than through Arbitrum One. The chain was purpose-built to handle tokenized stock offerings, a product line Robinhood had been testing on Arbitrum One since June 2025 before deciding it needed its own dedicated infrastructure. The financial results have been hard to ignore. On September 1, 202...