On the eve of its Q2 earnings report, Robinhood held a launch event in London, officially announcing the mainnet launch of its L2 chain, Robinhood Chain. The news drove Robinhood's stock price up 8.35% to $108.6, a six-month high. Built on Arbitrum Orbit, Robinhood Chain is positioned as an institutional-grade, AI-native blockchain infrastructure optimized for real-world assets (RWAs), directly connecting Robinhood’s on-chain users and providing developers with a plug-and-play DeFi environment.
Robinhood Chain Mainnet and Product Suite
Alongside the chain, Robinhood expanded its on-chain product matrix. The Robinhood Wallet now supports tokenized stocks across 120+ countries and regions, tradable via DEXs including Uniswap, Rialto, Lighter, 1inch, and Arcus. Users can use these tokenized stocks as collateral for lending or liquidity pools. In the perpetual contract space, Robinhood Wallet launched on-chain perpetuals with 90-day zero fees, gas subsidies, and point incentives. For yield products, Robinhood Earn is gradually opening to U.S. users, offering an estimated 7% APY on USDG stablecoin deposits in self-custodial wallets. The product relies on Morpho for lending infrastructure and is supported by Steakhouse, Ethena, Spark, Maple, and others, with an insurance mechanism to mitigate risk. Additionally, Robinhood introduced Agentic Accounts for crypto, allowing eligible U.S. users to connect AI models for autonomous market scanning and trading strategies, building on similar tools already offered for stocks and options. These expansions come amid pressure on Robinhood’s crypto business: Q1 crypto revenue fell 47% year-on-year to $134 million, and crypto notional trading volume dropped 48% to $24 billion. Globally, Robinhood now serves approximately 28 million users and continues expanding into Canada, Singapore (MAS license), Europe (commodity, ETF, and forex perpetuals), and the UK (crypto trading soon).
Ecosystem Integration and dYdX Branding Controversy
Leveraging its large user base, top protocols such as Uniswap, 1inch, Lighter, Morpho, Chainlink, BitGo, Ethena, and EtherFi have integrated with Robinhood Chain, covering trading, liquidity, lending, oracles, custody, and cross-chain solutions. However, the most contentious partnership involves dYdX, which announced a new DEX called Arcus built on Robinhood Chain rather than dYdX Chain. Arcus will support 95 tokenized stocks, perpetuals, and major crypto assets, and plans to offer pre-IPO equity trading of private companies like OpenAI. dYdX founder Antonio explained in an open letter that running a standalone public chain requires constant trade-offs between performance, user experience, and decentralization, while Robinhood Chain provides access to approximately 27.7 million funded accounts, offering immediate user base and liquidity. Arcus also received a strategic investment from Robinhood Crypto. The community reacted furiously, arguing that the core team diverting resources to a new brand risks cannibalizing dYdX’s brand value and draining traders and liquidity from dYdX Chain, diluting DYDX token value. The dYdX Foundation responded that its commitment to the dYdX protocol and governance remains unchanged; dYdX Chain continues to operate normally with no impact on trading, deposits, withdrawals, staking, or governance. DYDX token governance and staking mechanisms remain intact, with staking rewards paid in USDC. Antonio also promised that if Arcus issues a token, a portion will be reserved for the dYdX community, and Arcus will grant priority access to dYdX traders. Despite these assurances, market fears persisted, and DYDX token dropped approximately 40.7% on the day.
Outlook
Robinhood’s ambition extends far beyond providing a single chain infrastructure. By leveraging its massive user traffic, mature brokerage business, and global compliance framework, Robinhood aims to use Robinhood Chain to expand its business boundaries and accelerate its transformation from an internet broker to the next-generation global financial on-ramp. Whether this vision materializes remains to be seen.