Arbitrum pitches European banks as WisdomTree touts network’s revenue model

The Arbitrum Foundation met with European banks, wealth managers and family offices representing more than €800 billion in assets under management this week, according to Investing.com. The meetings coincided with WisdomTree releasing research on the blockchain network's business model. Brendan Ma, head of investment strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation, presented at roundtables hosted with WisdomTree in Lugano and Milan, and the Milan session alone was said to have brought together capital allocators representing more than €600 billion.

Ma told attendees that financial markets are moving onto public blockchains, that major institutions are coming onchain, and that token-based networks must be built on real business models with cash flow and revenue. The key theme, according to the report, centered on tokenization across financial assets accelerating and allocators seeking blockchain networks indexed to the revenue opportunity from that buildout.

WisdomTree argued in its report that Arbitrum's technology "has itself become a business, and it is now the fastest growing part of what Arbitrum earns." The firm said the ArbitrumDAO earned $6.19 million in the first half of 2026 at a blended gross margin above 97%, up from above 90% in 2025. Any chain running Arbitrum's technology and settling to Ethereum pays 10% of its net revenue, which WisdomTree described as royalty income. The first chain to pay, identified in the article only as a Robinhood-linked network, paid $4.37 million in license fees in its first 10 weeks, with about $3.5 million going to the DAO. WisdomTree noted that "a single chain has produced more than half what the whole organisation earned in the preceding six months."

The report identifies whether other enterprises will follow Robinhood in building their own chains as a key question going forward. The research follows Standard Chartered's initiation of coverage on Arbitrum in September.