Bernstein stuck with an Outperform rating on Robinhood and left its price target at $160. The argument: the company’s new chain business is already starting to turn onchain activity into high-margin revenue. In the report, the firm said Robinhood Chain has reached about $1.5 billion in total value locked since its July 1, 2026 launch, along with more than $50 billion in cumulative spot DEX volume, around $7 billion in perpetuals volume, and over 550 million transactions.
Using August data, the chain ranked third among blockchains by transaction count, trailing only Solana and BNB Chain. Bernstein said that points to Robinhood already putting together an early onchain financial stack covering stablecoins, spot trading, perpetuals, lending, and asset management.
From retail brokerage to financial plumbing
Robinhood has long made money through payment for order flow, stock and options trading, crypto services, and interest income. But with Robinhood Chain now live, the company is pushing further into financial infrastructure. That means moving into asset issuance, trading, settlement, and fee sharing at the blockchain layer.
Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 built with Arbitrum technology. It is meant for tokenized trading in stocks, ETFs, commodities, stablecoins, and other real-world assets. Users can trade those assets around the clock through the Robinhood wallet. And they can also use them in onchain lending, liquidity pools, and as collateral.
Fee growth accelerated, with HOOD keeping about 90%
By the report period, Robinhood Chain had generated about $39 million in net fees in total. Fee revenue came in at about $3.6 million in July, climbed to about $6.7 million in August, and then hit about $29 million in just the first six days of September. Bernstein said the curve showed a clear inflection point in late August.
Over the past 15 days, the chain generated about $33 million in fees. That was ahead of Solana at $11 million, BNB Chain at $9 million, and Ethereum at $6 million, putting Robinhood Chain in first place among blockchains over that stretch.
Under Robinhood’s revenue-sharing deal with infrastructure providers, HOOD keeps about 90% of onchain fees, while Arbitrum gets about 10%. According to the report, data publication costs paid to Ethereum mainnet are less than 1%. Bernstein’s point was simple: as volume grows, blockchain revenue does not need labor and operating expense to rise at the same pace, so added revenue can, at least in theory, drop into profit more directly.
That is why the firm opened the note with this line: "The exchange has now become a chain that runs around the clock, and that chain is turning into a source of profit."
Bernstein had earlier estimated that Robinhood Chain would contribute about $160 million in fee revenue by 2028. A straight annualization of the recent $33 million generated over 15 days would come in well above that figure. Still, the report warned against taking that jump too literally. The latest fee spike is tied to a fast increase in market trading activity, so short-term revenue should not be mechanically extended into future years.
Tokenized stocks rose about 14x in two months
A second growth path is showing up in tokenized stocks. Over the past two months, the value of tokenized stocks and ETFs on Robinhood Chain jumped from about $10 million to roughly $140 million, or around 14x.
Once ETFs, commodities, and U.S. Treasuries are included, the total value of tokenized assets on the chain stood at about $150 million. Stocks made up about 76%, ETFs about 17%, and commodities about 6%.
The number of addresses holding more than $1 in tokenized stock balances increased from about 35,000 at the end of August to 107,000. Bernstein also highlighted a mismatch between asset share and transfer share. Robinhood Chain holds only about 5% of the market’s tokenized stock value, yet its share of weekly transfer value has reached about 32%, second only to BNB Chain at 53%.
The report said that gap suggests tokenized stocks on Robinhood Chain are changing hands faster than they are on other networks. Not just sitting there. They are also being used in DEX trading, liquidity pools, lending, and collateral activity.
Robinhood uses a third-party tokenization model. The company buys and holds custody of the underlying shares, then issues onchain tokens tied to the economic performance of those stocks. The products are issued by Robinhood Assets Jersey Limited, offered in more than 120 countries and regions, and are not currently available to U.S. investors.
Holders get economic exposure to the underlying stock, not conventional equity ownership. The report said they are not registered shareholders of the underlying companies and do not directly hold voting rights, rights to participate in corporate actions, or standard shareholder protections. Dividends are passed through, but they are automatically used to buy more underlying shares rather than paid out in cash.
Trading mix is shifting away from an all-meme start
At launch, native meme coin pairs accounted for nearly 100% of total trading volume on Robinhood Chain. That started to change as tokenized stocks, ETH, and stablecoin activity grew.
By early September, meme coin pairs and ETH-dollar pairs each accounted for a little more than 30% of total volume, while tokenized stock pairs had risen into the high-teens to high-20s range. In the report’s main text, meme coin pairs, ETH-dollar pairs, and tokenized stock pairs represented about 36%, 36%, and 27%, respectively.
Bernstein said meme coin trading and tokenized stocks are not fully separate markets on the chain. Uniswap is the main automated market maker on Robinhood Chain, contributing about 92% of DEX volume in August. Liquidity providers can create trading pools between meme coins and tokenized stocks on Uniswap. So when demand rises on one side, liquidity, arbitrage, and trading demand on the other side can rise too.
The report called the current setup a distinctive growth mechanism: meme coins bring in traders and speculative capital, while tokenized stocks direct part of that liquidity toward real-world assets. But Bernstein also said that leaves recent growth exposed to market cycles. If meme coin activity cools off, it is still an open question whether tokenized stocks can keep volume going through longer-term allocation, collateral, and lending demand.
TVL reached $1.5 billion, with capital concentrated in lending and yield products
Robinhood Chain’s TVL expanded from about $51 million in early July to $1.5 billion, putting it seventh among major blockchains. The capital mix suggests the network is not leaning only on spot trading. Lending and asset management together make up more than 60% of TVL, spot DEX activity accounts for about 20%, and the rest is spread across real-world asset and perpetuals protocols.
Morpho, Ethena, and Uniswap are currently the leading protocols. Stablecoin supply on the chain is close to $1 billion, with USDG accounting for about 66% and USDe about 33%.
Bernstein said this shows Robinhood is trying to build a fuller onchain capital loop: users move funds into stablecoins and yield products, get liquidity through lending, and then use tokenized stocks and other assets in DEX trading or as collateral.
The report also pointed to concentration risk. Stablecoin supply is heavily concentrated in two assets, and TVL is driven mostly by a small group of protocols. Capital concentration, the fading of incentives, and risks tied to stablecoins and lending protocols themselves could all shape future growth.
The valuation case behind the $160 target
Bernstein kept its Outperform rating and $160 target on Robinhood. Based on the report’s reference close of $122.11, that implies about 31% upside.
The firm expects Robinhood’s revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and earnings per share to deliver compound growth rates of about 32%, 47%, and 49%, respectively, from 2026 to 2028. Its target price is based on 2028 EPS of $4.56 and uses a 35x one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple.
Bernstein projects Robinhood revenue rising from $4.473 billion in 2025 to $7.230 billion in 2027. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to increase from $2.640 billion to $5.161 billion, while EPS is forecast to move from $2.12 to $3.35.
Even with that growth, the report said the chain’s expected $160 million in 2028 fee revenue is still not decisive relative to Robinhood’s total company revenue. The bigger valuation point sits elsewhere: Robinhood is starting to control trading, asset issuance, settlement, and onchain fee income, pushing its model beyond a retail trading gateway and closer to financial infrastructure.
Bernstein also added a caution on the underlying figures. It said some parts of the original report text and charts do not fully match on tokenized stock share, perpetuals volume, and a few specific statistical dates. Because of that, the numbers are better used to follow the direction of Robinhood Chain’s growth than to draw overly exact conclusions from single data points.
The firm’s core view is that Robinhood Chain has already shown it can attract assets, capital, and trading activity at the same time, then convert that activity into high-margin revenue. If tokenized stocks eventually build durable trading and collateral demand beyond speculative bursts, Robinhood’s position would move past that of a retail broker and closer to a 24/7 global asset trading platform.