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Tim 2025/06/20 18:08 Save Arbitrum has broken through the ecological tipping point and completed the core leap from DeFi native protocol to TradFi infrastructure. Author: Cheeezzyyyy Compiled by: Tim, PANews In recent years, Arbitrum has not only not stopped expanding, but it is also entering a unique stage of ecological exploration, playing a game that few can participate in. This evolution redefines the boundaries of the adoption of cryptographic technology: DeFi native stage → gradual entry of institutions → the embryonic form of the financial system
Core Insight
From DeFi full stack to RWA infrastructure, "has-been internet celebrity" Arbitrum is becoming the preferred platform for institutional entry. Arbitrum has long entered the stage of ecological maturity, forming a comprehensive and mature market layout in the DeFi track. And now, it has achieved a crucial milestone:
Spot DEX: The cumulative trading volume of L2 has steadily ranked first, reaching $534.2 billion
Perpetual contracts: The total trading volume has reached $802 billion, setting a new historical record
Lending services: The liquidity depth is greater than $1.2 billion, which can enhance productivity scale through credit
RWA-Fi: It has grown to a historical peak of $262.5 million, covering 20 assets Arbitrum's self-sustainable growth is reflected in strong user growth, deep liquidity, and continuous activity in various business lines.
In the third quarter of 2021, during the early stage of virtual automated market making (vAMM) dominated by GMX and Gains Network, Arbitrum established the basic pattern of perpetual contract DEX. Nowadays, user growth has entered a stable and mature period, and the high user retention rate is clearly confirmed in the daily trading volume trend:
Since the third quarter of 2023, the daily trading volume has achieved a threefold leap (from $1 billion to $4 billion)
The cumulative trading volume has reached $802.5 billion
Subsequently, the perpetual DEX ecosystem has diversified and evolved, with the continuous emergence of professional players:
Rho Protocol: Native cryptocurrency interest rate derivatives (centered on centralized exchange funding rates)
Aark Digital: Ultra-high leverage trading (leverage up to a thousand times)
Ostium: Diverse asset allocation coverage (foreign exchange/stock indices/commodities) The ecosystem shows a trend of high user stickiness and product innovation, which proves its self-sustaining and dynamically evolving sustainable nature.
As of the third quarter of 2024, the total locked value (TVL) of Arbitrum's RWA-Fi sector has accelerated to a historical peak of $262.7 million. With the support of a diverse and growing number of global fund participants, this development momentum further consolidates Arbitrum's position in the enterprise-level tokenized DeFi field. It is worth noting that the $EUTBL issued by Spiko Finance has now taken the lead in the EU government bond tokenization market, occupying about 32% of the market share and surpassing the following competitors:
Franklin's $BENJI
BlackRock's $BUIDL All of this indicates that institutional adoption is no longer just a theoretical stage.
With institutional giants setting the trend, it is also worth noting the growing diversity within the Arbitrum sub-ecosystem. This spans RWA integration and DeFi native innovation. This integration creates a rich situation that meets a variety of needs:
Institutional allocators seeking compliant income-generating assets (such as government bonds, credit bond markets)
Crypto-native users pursuing permissionless leverage, structured products, or long-tail yield strategies By covering these two particular user groups, Arbitrum positions itself as an all-encompassing ecosystem:
The ability to attract capital from various fields, from DeFi to TradFi. Arbitrum's Orbit and Stylus are becoming the core engines for multi-domain growth, providing the ability to build dedicated chains for vertical scenarios across industries. This aligns with the "application chain theory," which holds that customization + flexibility is crucial for optimizing infrastructure. The adoption rate of this technical framework is currently rising rapidly:
83 official ecosystem partners
41 mainnets live (a 32% increase since April 2024)
21 testnets + 21 under development
The total locked value (TVL) of the Arbitrum ecosystem (excluding Arbitrum One) exceeds $320 million Following this trend, the framework, as the next-generation blockchain application's enterprise-level infrastructure, is rapidly gaining recognition throughout the industry.
Arbitrum is increasingly favored by more and more large institutions, with this attention supported by both practical application needs and dual verification at the infrastructure level.
Global funds: BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, Wellington Management are building RWA-Fi liquidity
Infrastructure: Plume Network, Novastro, re.al are bridging real-world capital to the chain And now, the final issuance network of traditional finance is beginning to emerge:
Converge is building an institutional settlement layer (e.g., Ethena, Securitize).
Rayls Labs launches a compliance chain suitable for the banking system. The conclusion is clear: Arbitrum is becoming the preferred infrastructure for real-world institutional deployment.
The surge in MEV phenomena marks the ecosystem's entry into the next stage of maturity. Arbitrum's Timeboost auction mechanism introduces an efficient and fair competitive model, perfectly mirroring the mainnet's proposer-builder separation (PBS) model. In less than two months since its launch, the usage rate has been quite high.
1.42 million DAO revenue (annualized about $8.5 million)
Now more than 60% of transaction fee revenue comes from Timeboost. We have observed early signs of MEV atomic arbitrage monetization, with most activities mainly focused on high-volume trading pairs (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins). I believe that the next stage of maturity will be marked by long-tail assets occupying a larger share in MEV traffic.
Interestingly, the Timeboost fast lane currently accounts for about 5% of Arbitrum's total transaction volume, maintaining a steady upward trend since its launch. But more telling is the trading volume footprint:
The current daily trading volume of about $175 million comes from MEV arbitrage
Arbitrum's average daily trading volume over the past month is about $900 million, of which about 21.8% comes from the Timeboost fast lane Please note that, in my view, this is significant, indicating that MEV is no longer a marginal phenomenon but has become a core engine driving substantial trading volume. As MEV develops into a native revenue stream, this phenomenon not only signifies an increase in user maturity but also marks a new stage in the protocol layer's profit-making mechanism. Finally, on InfoFi applications Arbitrum is in the spotlight as the core ecosystem embracing this narrative, with the recent Yapper ranking integrated with Kaito being a prominent manifestation. The project comes with a three-month incentive of 400,000 $ARB tokens (worth about $124,000). Now, the innovative form of second-layer InfoFi is taking shape: Yapyo positions itself as a decentralized consensus hub, integrating social collaboration with incentive design. Details are still unclear, but early signs suggest that $YAPYO is pursuing a niche market entry strategy for specific protocols, of course, this is my personal view.
The data clearly shows that Arbitrum is no ordinary ecosystem. It has broken through the tipping point and is entering a new stage from DeFi to a broader range of on-chain applications. Its maturity depth and evolutionary dynamics speak for themselves, so not all chains are playing the same game. Arbitrum is forging its own path.
