Arcus review: fees, markets and who it suits

Arcus is a self-custodial venue for tokenized US stocks and RWA perps on Robinhood Chain, with no Arcus fee on spot, taker fees from 0.0225% on perps during beta, and leverage up to 50x. It is blocked in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and perps need an invite code.

This Arcus review is desk research against public documentation and third-party data as of 2 October 2026. No account was opened and no trade was placed for it, so everything below is what Arcus, its help centre, The Block, DefiLlama and CoinGecko publish, not an account of using the product.

Who this is closed to

Per the Arcus help centre, Arcus is not available in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada. The protocol terms also exclude sanctioned persons and comprehensively sanctioned regions, with a minimum age of 18. That blocks most of the search traffic for a product built on US equities, which is the central oddity of the whole thing. The countries page covers how to check your own case.

Fees

Spot Stock Tokens carry a 0% Arcus fee. The cost did not vanish, it moved: into the request-for-quote price market makers give you and into the spread, which Arcus acknowledges widens outside US market hours. You also pay gas in ETH on Robinhood Chain on every action.

Perps taker fees were halved on 20 July 2026 for the duration of beta. Both columns matter, because only one of them is durable.

Tier	30 day perps volume	Standard taker	Beta taker
0	from $0	0.045%	0.0225%
1	$5M	0.038%	0.019%
2	$20M	0.032%	0.016%
3	$100M	0.027%	0.0135%
4	$400M	0.023%	0.0115%
5	$1B	0.020%	0.010%
6	$3B	0.019%	0.0095%

Source: Arcus, 20 July 2026. Arcus’ own worked example is a $100,000 market order at the base tier, which cost $45 and now costs $22.50.

Maker fees went to zero on 4 August 2026 for tiers 0 to 4, again for beta only, with a 0.002% rebate at tier 5 and 0.003% at tier 6. The standard schedule underneath is 0.015% at tier 0 falling to 0% at tier 4. Tiers update automatically on rolling 30 day perps volume.

Fiat deposits are the expensive route: roughly 2.1% on cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, about 0.5% on SEPA, about 1.1% on Revolut Pay, higher on PayPal, Skrill, AstroPay and Paysafecard, with a minimum around $3. Arcus adds no deposit fee of its own. Bridging carries third-party fees that vary by route, with no published bps. The fees page has the full picture and the deposit guide covers funding.

Markets

Arcus launched with 95 Stock Tokens and 35 RWA perps, doubled the stock token count on 11 August 2026, and The Block reported more than 190 stock tokens on 1 October 2026. CoinGecko counted 162 pairs that week, so date whichever figure you use.

Named markets include Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA, Amazon and Palantir, index and sector baskets like SPY, QQQ, SOXX and EWY, SGOV, gold, silver and oil, plus BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DYDX and ZEC. One detail trips people up: commodity perps are based on ETFs, specifically GLD, SLV and USO, not on futures. The tokenized stocks explainer sets out why a token wrapper behaves differently from the underlying.

Order types and margin

At launch Arcus supports market, limit, stop-market, stop-limit, take-profit, stop-loss triggered on mark price, and reduce-only. Cross and isolated margin are both available, with isolated positions live since 9 September 2026. Collateral and quoting are in USDG, the Paxos Labs stablecoin, and Stock Tokens can also be posted as perps collateral.

Not confirmed anywhere public: TWAP, trailing stops, OCO orders and time-in-force options. If your strategy depends on any of those, verify in the app and see the order types page.

Funding and onboarding

Four routes exist:

• Connect an existing wallet.
• Deposit crypto from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Solana or Bitcoin, with a minimum around $3.
• Connect a Coinbase account.
• Buy with fiat through card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, SEPA, Revolut Pay and several wallets.

Everything converts to USDG, with Fun as the infrastructure partner.

Sign-up is unusually smooth for a DEX: Privy embedded self-custodial wallets with email or social login mean no seed phrase step. Then the friction arrives, because you pay gas in ETH on Robinhood Chain and have to bridge a small amount in first. Withdrawals to a Robinhood Chain wallet take a few seconds with no minimum and no protocol cap; other chains bridge with an estimated time shown. How to use Arcus and withdrawals cover both ends.

What works

The zero-fee spot design is genuinely different from the usual maker-taker grind, and for a buy-and-hold tokenized equity position the absence of a venue fee is real money saved. Trading US names at 2am rather than waiting for the opening bell is the actual product.

The team is credible and named, the contracts were audited twice before launch by OpenZeppelin and Trail of Bits with public reports, and custody stays with the user. No security incident has been reported as of 2 October 2026. The trust page and the security page work through that evidence.

What does not

Perps are effectively closed. One invite code per $1 million of qualifying volume, non-transferable, obtainable only from someone already trading, means the headline 50x product is not available to a new account. Anyone selling you a code is not operating within the published rules, which the invite code page explains.

The beta fee schedules are temporary and the standard taker rates are roughly double, so a strategy that only works at 0.0225% does not work. There is no proof of reserves: the documentation says reserves are intended to be publicly attestable, with no attestor, cadence or link as of 2 October 2026, and the insurance fund’s size is not published. Mobile is barely a thing yet: the iOS listing is a pre-order from Pocket Protector Labs Inc expected 12 January 2027, described as market data and watchlists rather than trading, with the Android build in progress and no timeline. See the app page.

Who it suits, and who should skip it

It suits a self-directed trader outside the blocked countries who wants round the clock exposure to US equities and commodities, is comfortable with a self-custodial wallet, can bridge ETH for gas, and understands that a Stock Token is an issuer’s liability rather than a share.

Skip it if you are in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada. Skip it if you want actual ownership with voting rights and dividends, which Stock Tokens do not provide. Skip it if you are here for an airdrop, because there is no Arcus token and points are discretionary.

And skip the perps side entirely unless you already have a code, in which case run the numbers in the fee and liquidation calculator first. If eligibility is the blocker, the alternatives page is the next stop.

What this review could not verify

Being clear about the holes is more useful than filling them with guesses. As of 2 October 2026 the following are not published anywhere credible:

• The Robinhood Crypto funding amount, valuation, round name and full investor list.
• Headcount.
• The Google Play listing’s publisher, installs and release state.
• The deposit and withdrawal bps schedule that appears on CoinGecko but on no Arcus page.
• The referral claim minimum and payout asset.
• The volume threshold after which a referee can no longer attach a code.
• The insurance fund’s size.
• Any proof-of-reserves attestor, cadence or link.
• DefiLlama’s methodology, and therefore the reason its $343.8 million all-time figure sits so far below the $5 billion Arcus reported through The Block on the same day.
• TWAP, trailing stop and OCO support, and the time-in-force options.
• Whether identity verification is required, since Arcus states neither a requirement nor the absence of one.

Treat all of those as open questions, and treat anyone who answers them confidently with suspicion.

Verdict

A well-built venue solving a real problem, with one half of it behind a door most people cannot open. Spot tokenized equities at no venue fee is a decent reason to look if you are eligible. The perps product, the fee schedule and the reserves reporting all carry asterisks.

This is high-risk trading. Leveraged positions can be liquidated and most leveraged traders lose money. Stock Tokens are not shares: no voting rights, no dividend claim as such, not necessarily redeemable, and a price that can diverge from the underlying. Nothing here is financial advice.