Robinhood Chain Could Change Transaction Order: Will Higher Payers Move Ahead?

Robinhood Chain is reportedly considering a model that would let users pay higher fees to move their transactions up in the queue.

According to a CoinDesk report citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter, the network is examining a transaction-ordering model called Priority Gas Auctions, developed by Arbitrum. No definitive decision has been announced on whether Robinhood will adopt the system.

Designed for tokenized real-world assets, Robinhood Chain currently orders transactions on a “first come, first served” basis. If the model under consideration is introduced, users who offer higher transaction fees could have certain transactions processed ahead of others.

A fee race for transaction priority

The change concerns professional trading firms competing for opportunities that emerge and disappear in fractions of a second. Paying for priority could give these firms an advantage in transaction ordering.

This approach differs from the order-routing model used in Robinhood’s traditional brokerage business. In the traditional model, market makers pay brokerages to route customer orders to them. Here, users offer higher fees to give their own transactions priority on the blockchain.

The previous model offered a 200-millisecond advantage

On September 24, Arbitrum replaced its Time Boost ordering system with the Priority Gas Auctions model. The previous system offered a 200-millisecond priority advantage; Robinhood Chain had not used that earlier system.

Launched in July, Ethereum-compatible Robinhood Chain ranked among the top 10 blockchains by total value locked. The change discussed in the report concerns the order in which transactions are processed, rather than the network’s capacity.

Robinhood did not comment on the matter. Offchain Labs, Arbitrum’s developer, had also not responded to a request for comment at the time the report was published.