Overview of Arbitrum chains
Arbitrum chains give you flexibility and control without the constraint of running your own Layer 1 blockchain. Instead of bootstrapping and subsidizing your own validator set, your chain anchors its security and finality to Ethereum, turning security into a variable, usage-based expense.
That economic model is the core reason to choose Arbitrum: your business captures the fee revenue and priority-access value that L1s hand off to validators, because costs scale with usage (gas targets) rather than set (fixed) fees. You also control the economics directly—custom gas tokens, fee policy, and revenue capture—while getting institution-grade settlement: sub-second soft finality for a responsive user experience, configurable hard finality on Ethereum in minutes, and native withdrawals in as little as 15 minutes, backed by a clean, externally legible counterparty-risk story for your risk, audit, and compliance stakeholders.
Beyond economics, an Arbitrum chain lets you launch fast and customize deeply. You get day-one configuration over high, fully tunable throughput and block times (as low as 100ms), data availability (Rollup, AnyTrust, or external DA), sequencing and MEV rules, KYC/AML and permissioning, privacy, precompiles, governance, and multi-prover settlement—and you automatically inherit every future Ethereum and Arbitrum upgrade, including Stylus, without custom engineering.
Critically, your chain isn't siloed: it plugs directly into Ethereum's deep liquidity and the broader Arbitrum ecosystem. And you can de-risk your go-to-market with a phased "launch-and-migrate" path—prove your product on the shared, liquid Arbitrum One, then graduate to your own dedicated Arbitrum chain as a seamless continuation on the same stack, not a costly replatforming.
Customization
Speed and finality
Set confirmation speed and settlement behavior for products where timing and certainty matter—payments, trading, treasury, and internal asset movement.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tune block time | You own the speed-versus-cost tradeoff. Faster blocks let you position the chain as a premium, low-latency venue (trading, gaming, payments) without waiting on a third party to change infrastructure. | Near-instant confirmations make the app feel like a familiar web experience rather than a slow onchain one, reducing the “did my transaction go through?” hesitation. | - Configure chain finality - Sequencer timing adjustments |
| Configure deposit finality (delayed inbox) | You match certainty guarantees to your actual risk profile to avoid paying for stronger finality than your product needs. Adjust the time before the chain processes a deposit. | Predictable, well-defined settlement means users know exactly when funds and actions are final—important for anyone moving real value. | Configure chain finality |
| Enable fast withdrawals to reduce withdrawal finality time | Fewer support tickets and complaints about locked-up capital, and a more competitive bridging story when users compare your chain to alternatives. | Users get their funds in minutes instead of waiting the full challenge window, dramatically lowering the friction of exiting the chain. | Fast withdrawals |
Transaction pricing model
Align costs with your business model, including the option to use a custom gas token that fits customer experience, treasury strategy, or internal accounting needs.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Use a custom ERC-20 as the native gas token | You can drive utility to your own token, align fee revenue with your treasury strategy, and simplify internal accounting by denominating gas in the unit you already track. | Users pay fees in a familiar or branded token rather than acquiring a separate asset, removing a common onboarding hurdle. | - Custom gas token (Rollup) - Custom gas token (AnyTrust) |
| Manage the fee parameters that govern what users pay and fee distribution | Direct control over cost recovery and revenue, so you can tune the chain's economics to be self-sustaining or subsidized as your business model requires. | Transparent, deliberately set fees rather than opaque or volatile costs, which builds trust in the pricing. | Fee management |
| Configure native mint/burn behavior for the gas token | You can use a cross-chain-native token (such as a stablecoin) as your gas token, so it moves in and out of your chain through canonical interop protocols instead of lock-and-mint wrappers—keeping your treasury and accounting denominated in the real asset. | Users hold and pay fees in the canonical token rather than a wrapped derivative, so their gas balance stays fungible and redeemable across chains. | Native mint and burn |
| Dynamic pricing | You smooth out pricing (gas fee) volatility by setting multiple gas targets that react to short-term spikes and long-term load separately, so brief demand bursts don't turn into severe, sustained gas-price spikes. | More stable, predictable fees during periods of high demand instead of sudden, sharp cost increases exactly when the chain is busiest. | Dynamic pricing |
Throughput and latency
Handle higher volumes and faster response times for products that cannot degrade during periods of peak demand.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated throughput so your chain does not compete for computation and storage resources | Guaranteed capacity means you can make performance commitments (effectively an SLA) to partners and customers without worrying about noisy-neighbor contention. | Consistent performance during peak events—launches, drops, market volatility—instead of degraded speed exactly when demand is highest. | Manage gas target |
| Set the gas target and block gas limit to match your expected load | You provision capacity to match your expected transaction volume—scaling up for high-throughput workloads or holding it lean to manage operating costs—so throughput planning becomes a controllable lever rather than a fixed constraint you inherit. | Capacity provisioned to real demand means orders and settlements continue to clear promptly even during peak volume, rather than facing delays or failed transactions when the network is congested. | - Gas target guidance - Gas optimization |
Compliance and privacy
Create participation rules and data access controls that align with regulated workflows and protect sensitive information.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run permissioned validators to vet and restrict who participates in validation—useful for enterprise or regulated environments (for example, KYC for validators) | You can meet regulatory and legal requirements, reduce compliance risk, and make the chain viable for enterprise and institutional partners who can't operate on a fully open infrastructure. | Assurance that the chain operates within a vetted, accountable set of participants — a prerequisite for many regulated financial and enterprise products. | Validation and BoLD |
| Restrict who can read chain data by keeping data off the public L1 with an AnyTrust data availability committee | You keep sensitive business and user data out of a fully public ledger, satisfying privacy obligations and protecting competitive information. | Greater confidentiality around their activity and data than a fully public chain would offer. | Configure data availability |
| Move to permissionless validation later via BoLD when you are ready to decentralize | You can launch with tight control and decentralize on your own timeline — no re-platforming required as your product and risk tolerance mature. | A credible path to stronger trustlessness and censorship resistance over time, rather than being locked into a permissioned model forever. | Validation and BoLD |
Transaction sequencing
Customize transaction ordering to match your product, whether the priority is wider access, lower MEV exposure, or tighter handling of transaction flow.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keep the default FCFS ordering for intuitive, simple ordering that the world's largest exchanges use for trading | Fair, simple ordering keeps fast block times and avoids the reputational cost of a chain seen as hostile to ordinary users. | Built-in protection from front-running and sandwich attacks, so users aren't quietly taxed by MEV extractors on every trade. | How the Sequencer works |
| Enable Timeboost to auction an express lane, letting the chain owner capture MEV while preserving fair ordering for everyone else | You capture MEV as a revenue stream for the chain rather than leaking it to external searchers. | Non-express transactions keep their fair-ordering protections, while users who genuinely need priority have a transparent way to pay for it. | Timeboost configuration |
Governance and data availability
Choose how the chain is upgraded, administered, and backed by data availability based on the balance of cost, transparency, and resilience you need.
| Feature | Your benefit | User benefit | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Define the chain-owner role and access controls that govern upgrades and administration, and plan a path toward progressive decentralization | You retain the control needed for upgrades and incident response early on, then deliberately decentralize as the chain matures—balancing agility with credibility. | Clear accountability for who can change the chain, plus a visible path toward stronger, more decentralized guarantees. | Ownership and access control |
| Choose your data availability model—Rollup, AnyTrust, Alt-DA—to trade off cost against transparency and resilience | You dial the cost-versus-security balance directly; AnyTrust can cut data costs substantially, while Rollup maximizes security and transparency. | Lower fees when you choose AnyTrust, or maximum security and Ethereum-grade transparency when you choose Rollup | Configure data availability |
What problem do Arbitrum chains solve?
Arbitrum chains are dedicated chains built with Arbitrum technology. Teams can configure execution, fee models, governance, data availability, validation, and other chain parameters for their application or business requirements.
The Ethereum ecosystem is supported by a decentralized network of nodes that each run Ethereum's Layer 1 (L1) client software. Ethereum's block space is in high demand, so users are often stuck waiting for the network to become less congested (and thus, less expensive).
Arbitrum's protocols address this challenge by offloading some of the Ethereum network's heavy lifting to another decentralized network of nodes that support the Arbitrum stack (Arbitrum chains).
How do Arbitrum chains help the Ethereum ecosystem?
Arbitrum helps Ethereum move towards a multi-chain future. This is valuable for the following reasons:
| Value add | Description |
|---|---|
| Scalability | Multiple chains help overcome scaling bottlenecks by dividing activity into opt-in environments with separate resource management. |
| Flexible security models | Different chains can experiment with different security models, allowing for tradeoffs. For example: Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova are both L2 chains, with Arbitrum Nova giving developers the ability to optimize for lower fees. With Arbitrum chains, extending the technology and experimenting is easier than ever. |
| Flexible execution environments | Different chains can experiment with more-or-less restrictive execution environments. For example, although Arbitrum chains are fully EVM compatible, Arbitrum chains can restrict smart contract functionality to optimize for your project's needs. |
| Flexible governance | Arbitrum chains let you define your own governance protocols. |
Are Arbitrum chains the same thing as "app chains"?
It depends on your definition of "app chain". Arbitrum chains can be used as application-specific chains (often referred to as "app chains" or "appchains"). But they aren't just for apps. They're for hosting EVM-compatible smart contracts using self-managed infrastructure that isolates compute resources away from Arbitrum's public L2 chains based on your unique needs.
- You can use your Arbitrum chain to host the smart contracts that support one app, two apps, an ecosystem of apps, or no apps at all.
- Ethereum-grade security and interoperability, so your assets, users, and builders flow to/from Ethereum seamlessly and safely.
- You can use your Arbitrum chain to host a private, centralized service.
- Your Arbitrum chain can be special-purpose, general-purpose, and everything in-between.
- Customize/tune your chain to your specific use case however you want.
- You could even build an app that uses multiple Arbitrum chains to support strange new forms of redundancy, high availability, and trustlessness.