Paxos’ Global Dollar (USDG) went live on Arbitrum One on October 6, 2026, as the Ethereum layer-2 joined the Global Dollar Network to share reserve rewards. Arbitrum takes no direct cut of reserve income from the stablecoins already on its network.
The Brief
- Paxos issues USDG one-for-one against dollar reserves, and the token has more than $3 billion in circulation across networks.
- DefiLlama data puts Arbitrum’s stablecoin base at about $3.8 billion, with Circle’s USDC making up roughly 60% of it.
- An ArbitrumDAO governance proposal seeks 100 million ARB in incentives plus treasury support to grow USDG on the network.
- Kraken will handle deposits and withdrawals, while Stargate moves USDG between Arbitrum and other blockchains.
Arbitrum joins the network to share USDG rewards
Paxos mints USDG natively on Arbitrum One, and the token launched with integrations across trading, lending and payments. Fluid, Morpho, GMX, Maple, Li.Fi, Gauntlet, Steakhouse and LayerZero support it from the start. Uniswap and Fhenix are set to follow.
$USDG from @Paxos is now live on Arbitrum. Joining the Global Dollar Network brings Arbitrum closer to GDN members like @RobinhoodApp, @krakenfx, @OKX and more. We’ll grow $USDG as a core asset on Arbitrum One through partner incentives and protocol-level integrations. 🧵 https://t.co/2m9YkHbdGi
— Arbitrum (@arbitrum) October 6, 2026
The Global Dollar Network has more than 150 partners, among them Robinhood, Kraken, Mastercard and OKX. Its model splits the rewards from USDG reserves among the partners that drive adoption, instead of leaving that income with the issuer alone. Arbitrum will put its share toward adoption and ecosystem development.
That targets a gap in how Arbitrum makes money. USDC dominates the network’s stablecoin supply, but the reserve income behind those tokens doesn’t flow to Arbitrum directly. Brendan Ma, head of investment strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation, said Arbitrum and its builders “now have a stake in the growth upside.” The Foundation’s own count of stablecoins on the network runs closer to $4 billion, a little above the DefiLlama tally.
The governance proposal, published Tuesday, asks ArbitrumDAO to:
- Make USDG growth a strategic priority.
- Add the new ARB allocation to its DRIP incentive program.
- Deploy treasury assets to support USDG liquidity.
Businesses integrating USDG can also apply for support from the Arbitrum Foundation. ARB holders can read the full proposal text before the DAO votes on it.
USDG supply still sits on other chains
Listing a stablecoin is easy; moving its float is harder. DefiLlama ranks USDG as the seventh-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with about $3.09 billion in circulation. Most of that supply sits on X Layer, Robinhood Chain and Solana, and X Layer has already drawn a dedicated Pendle market for USDG. The ARB incentives exist to pull part of that float onto Arbitrum.
Rival groups are chasing the same prize. Open Standard is building OpenUSD with backing from Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and Shopify, while 37 European banks back Qivalis. Each consortium spreads issuance, distribution and economics across many partners, so no single company holds control.
Arbitrum has run this play before. Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 built using Arbitrum, opened its public mainnet in July after a February testnet. The network supports tokenized real-world and digital assets, with 24/7 trading, lending markets and perpetual futures exchanges. Robinhood agreed to share part of the revenue from user activity with the Arbitrum ecosystem.
The Bottom Line
Standard Chartered said last month that Arbitrum receives 10% of net protocol revenue from companies building on its infrastructure. The bank forecast that ARB could reach $10 by 2030, roughly 70 times its price at the time. It also expects tokenized assets to hit $4 trillion by the end of 2028.
Read together, the two deals show Arbitrum trading its rails for a revenue share, first with a brokerage and now with a stablecoin issuer. Two questions remain open. What slice of USDG rewards will actually reach Arbitrum? And how much supply can the ARB incentives pull from X Layer, Robinhood Chain and Solana? The first real test is the ArbitrumDAO vote on the proposal.
