Glossary · Infrastructure

What is Arbitrum Orbit?

Arbitrum Orbit, also called Arbitrum chains, lets a team launch its own chain on Arbitrum's Nitro stack, as an L2 on Ethereum or an L3 on Arbitrum One.

How does Arbitrum Orbit work?

The Arbitrum Foundation launched Orbit on March 16, 2023, so that any team could run its own layer 3 on top of Arbitrum One or Nova. In January 2024 the Arbitrum Expansion Program opened the other door: layer 2s that settle straight to Ethereum. Either way the chain runs the same Nitro software as Arbitrum One. Its owner sets the rest, from the gas token and block times to who runs the sequencer and where the data goes, whether that is Rollup mode, AnyTrust or another DA layer.

The license decides who pays. An L3 that settles to Arbitrum One or Nova shares no revenue and pays its way in fees on the chain below. Any other chain, Ethereum L2s included, returns 10% of its net protocol revenue, 8% to the ArbitrumDAO and 2% to a developer guild. Robinhood Chain settles to Ethereum and contributes under that program. By the Arbitrum Foundation's count, fees from all such chains came to $360,000 in July 2026, 35% of the DAO's income.

The name itself is fading. Arbitrum's docs now say Arbitrum chains, Robinhood's docs say Arbitrum Dedicated Blockchains, and the mainnet announcement called Robinhood Chain a layer 2 built with the Arbitrum Platform. Orbit lives on in older docs, in links on the Arbitrum Portal and in L2BEAT's Built on Arbitrum Orbit badge, which covers ApeChain and Xai, both L3s on Arbitrum One, as well as Robinhood Chain.

To a trader, an Orbit chain feels like any EVM network, with two catches. Take Robinhood Chain. Every fee there bundles L2 execution with the cost of posting data to Ethereum, so an estimate built from execution gas alone, like 21,000 gas for a transfer, comes in low. And the operator holds a lot of power. One sequencer orders transactions first come, first served, and L2BEAT rates the chain Stage 0: only 2 whitelisted validators can prove fraud, the challenge period is 6 days 8 hours, and its contracts can be upgraded with no delay.

Also called: Orbit chain, Arbitrum chains, Arbitrum Orbit chain.

Where does Arbitrum Orbit show up in Cashboard?

Cashboard supports two Arbitrum-built networks directly, Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain, each with Chain status, trending pools from GeckoTerminal and a watch-only portfolio read through Blockscout. Robinhood Chain also gets a chain pulse, and one Arbitrum quirk shows there. Every block reports a gas limit of 1,125,899,906,842,624, a figure Arbitrum's docs call artificially large, so a share of it means nothing and the widget drops the Utilization tile that Base gets. Block time is averaged over 600 blocks and reads in milliseconds. The L2 scoreboard ranks both against the other L2s growthepie tracks, with L2BEAT's stage where it has one, and keeps Robinhood Chain listed even when it falls below the row limit.

Frequently asked questions

Is Robinhood Chain an Arbitrum Orbit chain?

Yes. Robinhood and Arbitrum describe it as a layer 2 built with the Arbitrum Platform, Robinhood's docs call it an Arbitrum Nitro layer 2, and L2BEAT tags it Built on Arbitrum Orbit. It settles to Ethereum, charges gas in ETH and pays into the Arbitrum Expansion Program.

Is Arbitrum Orbit still called Orbit?

Less and less. Arbitrum's docs call them Arbitrum chains, and a pull request opened in September 2026 proposes replacing Orbit with Arbitrum chains across the docs. Tools, links and L2BEAT's badge still say Orbit, so both names point at the same thing.

Related terms

Last reviewed October 25, 2026. Market data in Cashboard comes from the providers named on each widget and may be delayed. Nothing here is financial advice.