Robinhood Chain Goes Live: A Multi-Product Onchain Finance Gateway
On July 2, Robinhood hosted 'The World is Flat' event in London to announce the mainnet launch of Robinhood Chain, a Layer-2 network built on Arbitrum Orbit. Positioned as an institution-grade, AI-native infrastructure optimized for real-world assets (RWAs), the chain directly connects Robinhood's onchain users and provides plug-and-play DeFi development tools. Simultaneously, Robinhood expanded its onchain product matrix: tokenized stocks became available via Robinhood Wallet in over 120 countries, tradable on DEXs such as Uniswap, 1inch, Rialto, Lighter, and Arcus, with the ability to be used as collateral for lending or added to liquidity pools. Onchain perpetuals also launched, allowing trading of stocks, commodities, and other assets outside traditional market hours, with an initial 90-day fee and gas subsidy period.
For yield products, Robinhood Earn—its first decentralized lending product within the main app—is gradually rolling out to U.S. users. Built on Morpho's lending infrastructure and supported by protocols like Steakhouse, Ethena, Spark, and Maple, it lets users deposit USDG stablecoins into self-custodial wallets and earn an estimated 7% APY, with insurance mechanisms to reduce risk. On the AI front, Robinhood introduced Agentic Accounts for crypto, enabling eligible U.S. users to let AI agents autonomously scan markets and execute trading strategies within defined risk parameters—an extension of similar tools already used in Robinhood's stock and options business.
These expansions come as Robinhood's crypto business faces headwinds: Q1 crypto revenue fell 47% year-over-year to $134 million, and crypto notional trading volume dropped 48% to $24 billion. The company, which now serves about 28 million users, is accelerating global expansion—entering Canada, obtaining a MAS license in Singapore, preparing to launch commodities, ETF, and forex perpetuals in Europe, and opening crypto trading services in the UK soon.
Ecosystem Assembly and the dYdX Controversy
Thanks to its massive user base, major protocols including Uniswap, 1inch, Lighter, Morpho, Chainlink, BitGo, Ethena, and EtherFi have committed to building on Robinhood Chain, covering trading, liquidity, lending, oracles, custody, and cross-chain services. The most contentious integration, however, is dYdX's new DEX, Arcus. On July 2, the dYdX Foundation announced a partnership with Robinhood to launch Arcus on Robinhood Chain, supporting 95 tokenized stocks, perpetuals, and major crypto assets, with plans to allow tokenized stocks and crypto as collateral and to open pre-IPO trading for private companies like OpenAI.
The decision to deploy Arcus on Robinhood Chain instead of dYdX Chain sparked immediate backlash from the dYdX community. Many community members fear that the core team's focus will shift to Arcus, draining development resources and liquidity away from dYdX Chain, potentially diluting the DYDX token's value. Given that dYdX once conducted one of the largest airdrops in the industry, and Arcus likely has its own token launch plans, traders and liquidity could migrate, reducing dYdX Chain's volume and activity. dYdX founder Antonio stated that after years of running dYdX Chain, the team recognized the inherent trade-offs between performance, user experience, and decentralization, and that Robinhood's ~27.7 million funded accounts offered an immediate user and liquidity base. He also revealed that Arcus received a strategic investment from Robinhood Crypto.
In response, the dYdX Foundation emphasized that its support for the dYdX protocol and community governance remains unchanged: dYdX Chain continues normal operations (trading, deposits, withdrawals, staking, governance), DYDX governance and staking mechanisms are intact, staking rewards are still paid in USDC, and community treasuries remain under DYDX holder control. Antonio, as the largest DYDX holder, claimed his interests are fully aligned with the community and promised that if Arcus issues a token, a portion will be reserved for the dYdX community, and Arcus will prioritize access for dYdX traders. Nevertheless, market fears persisted: DYDX dropped approximately 40.7% intraday after the announcement. Overall, Robinhood's ambition extends far beyond a single chain infrastructure. By leveraging its user traffic, mature brokerage business, and global compliance layout, Robinhood aims to transform from an internet broker into the next-generation global finance gateway. Whether this vision becomes reality remains to be tested by the market.