Author: Cheeezzyyyy
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
In recent years, Arbitrum has not only not stopped expanding, but it is also entering a unique phase of ecological exploration, playing a game few can participate in.
This evolution redefines the boundaries of cryptocurrency technology adoption: DeFi native phase → institutions gradually enter → early signs of a financial system emerge.
Key Insights
Arbitrum has long entered the mature stage of the ecosystem, forming a comprehensive mature segmentation market layout in the DeFi track.
And now, it has achieved a critical milestone:
Spot DEX: L2 cumulative trading volume remains at the highest seat, reaching $534.2 billion.
Perpetual contracts: Total trading volume reached $802 billion, setting a historical high.
Lending services: Liquidity depth greater than $1.2 billion, productivity scale can be enhanced through credit.
RWA-Fi: Increased to $262.5 million historical peak, covering 20 assets.
Arbitrum's self-sustaining growth is reflected in strong user growth, deep liquidity, and sustained activity across various business lines.
In Q3 2021, during the early stage of virtual automated market makers (vAMM) dominated by GMX and Gains Network, Arbitrum built the foundational layout for perpetual contract DEX.
Nowadays, user growth has entered a stable mature phase, with high user retention clearly evidenced in daily trading volume trends:
Since Q3 2023, daily trading volume has achieved about a 3-fold leap ($1 billion → $4 billion).
Cumulative trading volume reached $802.5 billion.
Subsequently, the perpetual DEX ecosystem achieved diversified evolution, with professional players continuously emerging:
Rho Protocol: Native cryptocurrency interest rate derivatives (centered on centralized exchange funding rates).
Aark Digital: Ultra-high leverage trading (leverage multiples up to 1,000 times).
Ostium: Coverage of diversified asset allocation (forex/stock index/commodities).
The ecosystem shows a trend of high user stickiness and product innovation, confirming its self-sustaining and dynamically evolving nature.
As of Q3 2024, the total locked value (TVL) in Arbitrum's RWA-Fi sector is accelerating towards a historical peak of $262.7 million.
With support from a diverse and growing global fund participant base, this momentum further consolidates Arbitrum's position as a leader in enterprise-level tokenized DeFi.
It is worth noting that the $EUTBL issued by Spiko Finance is now leading the EU government bond tokenization market, capturing about 32% market share, surpassing the following competitors:
Franklin's $BENJI
BlackRock's $BUIDL
All this indicates that institutional-level adoption is no longer at the theoretical stage.
With institutional giants driving trends, it is also noteworthy that the Arbitrum sub-ecosystem is experiencing increasing diversity.
This spans RWA integration and native innovations in DeFi.
This integration creates a rich landscape that meets various needs:
Institutional allocators seeking compliant revenue-generating assets (such as government bonds, credit bond markets).
Crypto-native users chasing permissionless leverage, structured products, or long-tail yield strategies.
By covering two special 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 core engines for growth across multiple fields, providing dedicated chain building capabilities for cross-industry vertical scenarios.
This aligns with the 'Application Chain Theory', which posits that customization + flexibility are crucial for optimizing infrastructure.
Currently, the adoption rate of this technology framework is rapidly increasing:
83 official ecosystem partners.
41 mainnet lines launched (32% increase since April 2024)
21 testnet lines + 21 in development
The total locked value (TVL) of the Arbitrum ecosystem (excluding ArbitrumOne) exceeds $320 million.
If this trend continues, the framework as a next-generation blockchain application enterprise-level infrastructure is rapidly gaining recognition across the industry.
Arbitrum is gaining increasing favor from large institutions, supported by a dual validation of actual application demand and infrastructure.
Global funds: BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and Wellington Management are building RWA-Fi liquidity.
Infrastructure: Plume Network, Novastro, and re.al are bridging real-world capital to on-chain.
And now, the ultimate issuance network of traditional finance is beginning to take shape:
Converge is building an institutional-grade settlement layer (e.g., Ethena, Securitize).
Rayls Labs launches a compliance chain for the banking system.
The conclusion is clear: Arbitrum is becoming the preferred infrastructure for the deployment of real-world institutions.
The surge in MEV phenomena marks that the ecosystem is moving towards the next stage of mature development.
Arbitrum's Timeboost auction mechanism introduces an efficient and fair competitive model, perfectly mirroring the proposer-builder separation (PBS) model of the mainnet.
Since its launch less than two months ago, the usage rate has been quite high.
1.42 million DAO revenue (annualized about 8.5 million)
Now, over 60% of trading fee revenue comes from Timeboost.
We are observing early signs of MEV atomic arbitrage monetization, with most activities concentrated in high-volume trading pairs (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins).
I believe that the sign of maturity in the next phase will be the long-tail assets occupying a larger share of MEV traffic.
Interestingly, the Timeboost fast lane currently accounts for about 5% of Arbitrum's total trading volume, consistently maintaining an upward trend since its launch.
But what is more telling is the trading volume footprint:
Currently, about $175 million in daily trading volume comes from MEV arbitrage.
Arbitrum's average daily trading volume over the past month is about $900 million, of which approximately 21.8% comes from the Timeboost fast lane.
Please note, this is significant in my view, as it indicates that MEV is no longer a fringe phenomenon, but has become a core engine driving substantial trading volume.
As MEV develops into a native revenue stream, this phenomenon signifies both an increase in user maturity and a new stage in the profitability mechanisms at the protocol layer.
Finally, about InfoFi applications
Arbitrum, as the core ecosystem embracing this narrative, is highlighted by the recent integration of the Yapper leaderboard with Kaito.
The project comes with a 3-month incentive of 400,000 $ARB tokens (approximately $124,000).
Today, a new form of InfoFi innovation is taking shape: Yapyo positions itself as a decentralized consensus hub, merging social collaboration with incentive design.
Details are unclear, but early signs suggest that $YAPYO is pursuing a niche market entry strategy for specific protocols, though this is my personal opinion.
According to the data, it is clear that Arbitrum is by no means an ordinary ecosystem.
It has crossed a critical point and is entering a new phase from DeFi to broader on-chain applications.
Its maturity depth and evolutionary dynamics are self-evident, so not all chains are playing the same game.
Arbitrum is charting its own course.
