OpenChainBench

Arbitrum vs Ethereum

Arbitrum leads on 2 of 5 shared benchmarks, Ethereum on 3. Arbitrum wins on Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains ($0.00121 vs $0.0304), Fastest LayerZero source chain by end-to-end message delivery (25.56 s vs 4.1 min). Ethereum wins on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency (13.7 min vs 17.3 min), Fastest Chainlink CCIP source chain by end-to-end delivery latency (16.5 min vs 17.8 min), Fastest Axelar GMP source chain by end-to-end delivery (17.2 min vs 19.4 min). Data as of 2026-10-06 UTC.

Read methodology Last measured Window: rolling 24h6 shared benchmarks, 5 measured on both sides
Arbitrum logo
Arbitrum

Optimistic rollup built on Nitro stack with a fast-finality sequencer. Sub-second block times (~250 ms) via a 250 ms default block interval, far below the 2 s OP Stack convention. 7-day fraud-proof window for L1 finality.

Ethereum logo
Ethereum

PoS chain using Gasper (Casper FFG plus LMD-GHOST). 12-second slots with deterministic finality every two epochs, roughly 12.8 minutes.

Side by side measurements

Stablecoin flow by chain: where dollars actually moved over 30 days

Blockchains
Provider30d changeStablecoin floatNet 7d7d change
Arbitrum6.35%$4.12B$219.63M5.64%
Ethereum-$147.29B$119.01M0.081%
View
Arbitrumn/aEthereumn/a

Stablecoin float is where dollars are parked, not what they do. A chain can take in a billion that sits idle, and lose float to a single issuer redeeming. The figure is DefiLlama's chain-wide pegged-USD aggregate, every issuer combined; it does not separate a bridge inflow from a native mint, and a dollar bridged to an L2 counts on both chains, so rows are not additive. Read the net dollars with the percentage beside them: the same $400M is a rounding error on Ethereum and a doubling elsewhere.

Rolling 24h · Net stablecoin flow (30d)Raw JSON

Frequently asked questions

Arbitrum vs Ethereum: which one is better?

Arbitrum and Ethereum are compared on 6 shared OpenChainBench benchmarks. Arbitrum leads on Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains. Ethereum leads on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency. See the live table on this page for every metric.

Which is cheaper, Arbitrum or Ethereum?

On the Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains benchmark, Arbitrum leads at $0.00121 versus Ethereum at $0.0304. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.

Which is faster, Arbitrum or Ethereum?

On the Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency benchmark, Ethereum leads at 13.7 min versus Arbitrum at 17.3 min (provisional). Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.

How is the Arbitrum vs Ethereum comparison measured?

Every benchmark on this page uses the same open methodology, published at https://openchainbench.com/methodology. Data is CC-BY-4.0. Measurement harnesses are MIT-licensed.

Related comparisons

How this pair was selected

Auto-generated pairs require: both providers in the same benchmark for seven consecutive days, at least 1000 samples per provider, observable third-party search demand, and a public /products/[slug] page on OCB. Editorially curated pairs (like this one) may publish early when search demand is high and data is accruing; panels with fewer than 100 samples are shown as provisional. The full pair ledger is versioned in the public repo.

Live data refreshes via ISR within 60 seconds of a new run. Sources are the same Prometheus queries surfaced on the parent benchmark pages.