When others start buying, you say it's hard to buy;
Others keep buying, and you say the profit is low;
When others are taking off, you say they bought too early.
------
🔊 Here is a summary of key news and events for Arbitrum (an Ethereum Layer 2 solution) over the past month (mid-December 2025 to January 2026).
Arbitrum remains strong in the RWA (Real World Assets) and DeFi sectors, but the ARB token price continues to face pressure.
🔹 Technical and Network Upgrade: ArbOS Dia Upgrade to be launched between late 2025 and early 2026 (including ArbOS Dia rollout), focusing on improved fee predictability, higher throughput, optimized gas estimation algorithms, and support for mobile optimization and biometric login. This upgrade aligns with Ethereum's Fusaka hard fork, enhancing fee stability and overall scalability, representing a significant commitment to long-term growth.
🔹 Ethereum BPO Fork (around January 7, 2026): Blob capacity increased from 15 to 21, improving data availability for Layer 2 solutions (such as Arbitrum), further reducing transaction costs and enhancing dApp scalability—without requiring a hard fork.
🔹 Ecosystem and Adoption Highlights: RWA and institutional integration continue to surge:
Arbitrum has become the preferred platform for institutions. Robinhood launched tokenized US stocks and ETFs in the EU, expanding to nearly 2,000 tokenized stocks with significant growth in total market cap (some reports mention over $13 million).
Other deployments include Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, Spiko, and WisdomTree; Spiko's USTBL AUM exceeds $200 million.
2025 review shows RWA mainstreaming, with Arbitrum TVL exceeding $20 billion, tokenized assets surpassing $1.1 billion (18x YoY growth).
🔹 SafePal Integrates Morpho Vaults (January 2026): SafePal wallet (over 25 million users) integrates non-custodial yield vaults on Arbitrum, enabling USDC/USDT yield generation, emphasizing the combination of self-custody and high availability.
🔹 Other Ecosystem Milestones: DRIP Season One extended to February 2026, with stablecoin liquidity increasing by 229%.
- Bitget Earn deposited over $50 million USDT into Morpho vaults.
- Omni perpetual contract open interest reached $1 billion.
- USDC transaction volume grew 80% year-over-year.
- The Japan Ambassador Program is launching, in collaboration with institutions including the University of Tokyo.
- Rumble integration allows 58 million monthly active users to tip with USDT.
- Multiple projects such as Gains Network, Pendle, and others saw significant growth in TVL and transaction volume.
🔹 Overall Data Strength: Arbitrum led in inflows during 2025, with TVL exceeding $3 billion, strong net inflows; stablecoin market cap surpassed $8 billion (up 82% YoY); lifetime transaction volume exceeded 2.1 billion; Orbit chain surpassed 100 chains.
🔹 Security and Negative Events
IPOR Fusion USDC Vault Exploited (January 6, 2026): Loss of approximately $336,000 due to an old contract vulnerability and elevated permissions via EIP-7702. IPOR DAO committed to full compensation from treasury funds.
Arbitrum Project Smart Contract Attack (around January 5, 2026): Two small projects suffered unauthorized withdrawals, totaling around $1.5 million in losses, involving the same deployer.
🔹 Token and Market Dynamics ARB Unlock:
A major cliff unlock on January 16, 2026 (valued at approximately $19 million) is scheduled, part of a predetermined vesting plan, which may create short-term supply pressure. Previous unlock on December 16, 2025, released 92.65 million ARB (1.9% of circulating supply).
🔹 Price and Predictions:
ARB has recently been trading around $0.20, with some forecasts indicating a short-term bear market (low Fear & Greed Index). However, based on weekly Zen Talk analysis, the current state shows clear divergence, indicating an undervalued position. If the market recovers, prices could return to the central range ($0.3982–$0.6246).
👉 Overall, Arbitrum continues to solidify its position as the leading L2 during the 2025–2026 transition, particularly excelling in RWA, stablecoins, and institutional adoption. The 'Arbitrum Everywhere' narrative continues to gain momentum, but risks related to security incidents and unlocks should be noted.
Follow Zen Talks Analysis to unlock hidden wealth secrets 🫶
