Robinhood Chain recorded more than $3 billion in weekly DEX volume within three weeks of its mainnet launch, while transaction count climbed past 105 million and total value locked rose above $300 million, according to Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto and international.
Kerbrat, who oversees Robinhood’s crypto product lines including Robinhood Chain, tokenized stocks, staking services and perpetual futures, discussed the company’s strategy in an interview on TheRollup released on July 24, 2026. The source material carried a conflict-of-interest disclosure noting that his compensation and equity incentives are directly tied to $HOOD share performance.
Launch metrics moved higher after the initial figures
The host opened with a set of early post-launch figures for Robinhood Chain: $3 billion in weekly DEX volume, more than 50 million transactions, over 1 million addresses and more than $300 million in TVL.
Kerbrat said those numbers had already been surpassed. As of that morning, he said, transaction count had gone beyond 105 million. He described the team as very excited and said the figures point to strong demand for on-chain products.
He also stressed that the ecosystem was prepared to support developers from the start, rather than launching the chain first and trying to attract usage later.
Meme tokens and RWAs sit on opposite ends of a barbell
The interview revisited Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s social-media description of the chain as a “barbell,” with meme tokens on one end and real-world assets on the other.
Kerbrat said the chain was designed from day one to be permissionless and open to all kinds of applications.
“Our philosophy is to make the chain permissionless and open to everything. Meme, RWA, and many other products are all welcome. We are deeply integrating with the chain,” he said.
In his framing, meme tokens bring in market makers and DeFi users, while RWAs serve global users who cannot easily access U.S. stocks and ETFs. He said the two are not at odds because they pull in different audiences.
Kerbrat pointed to products that are already live, including Robinhood Earn, which offers stablecoin yield through on-chain protocols inside the main app, and tokenized stocks tradable through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries.
When asked how these products differ from traditional finance, he listed several constraints in the legacy system: wire transfers that can only be handled from 9:30 to 4:00, commission-free brokerages that still run on weekday market hours, and options and futures contracts that expire. He said the on-chain version is a better product design.
How Robinhood wants to bring 27 million funded accounts on-chain
Kerbrat said Robinhood has 27 million funded accounts, but most of those users have not engaged with DeFi because it remains too technical.
“Robinhood has 27 million funded accounts. For those users, DeFi is still too complex and requires too much technical knowledge. What we want is to bring over the good products from DeFi while making them easy to use and easy to approach, without creating a wallet and without managing private keys,” he said.
His answer was to combine DeFi rails with Robinhood’s own interface, security layer and user experience. He described Robinhood Earn as a working example: users can access on-chain yield in the main app without setting up a wallet or handling private keys themselves.
Kerbrat called that trend a convergence of CeFi and DeFi, where centralized platforms use blockchain infrastructure to build better products while keeping the experience simple for end users.
Just-in-time tokenization for stock tokens
On tokenized equities, Kerbrat said Robinhood uses a just-in-time tokenization model. Traditional DEX listings often require liquidity pools to be established in advance. Robinhood, as a broker that already holds the underlying shares, can move a stock on-chain quickly when a user wants to trade it.
He said the liquidity design combines prop AMM, standard AMM, RFQ and classic pools to help keep pricing competitive at any moment.
Robinhood Chain currently carries more than 90 stock tokens, and Kerbrat said that is only a starting point. He said the lineup is expected to expand into international equities and private markets.
Why Robinhood picked Arbitrum instead of building an L1
Asked why Robinhood opted for Arbitrum’s stack rather than building a separate blockchain from scratch, Kerbrat gave a practical answer: the company wants to focus on what it does best, namely UX, UI and financial products.
He said reaching Ethereum-level security and decentralization takes a long time and many hard decisions. Using Ethereum’s security and the liquidity already present across the EVM ecosystem was, in his view, the more sensible option.
Kerbrat cited Stylus, fast block times and low gas costs among the reasons for choosing Arbitrum as the L2 stack. He also said the team proactively lowered gas fees during a surge in on-chain activity last week to protect the user experience.
The host also brought up debate over Ethereum “rent,” noting that Robinhood Chain had generated more than $1 million in revenue while paying only 1%-2% to Ethereum. Kerbrat said that is simply how Ethereum’s default mechanism is set up, and he did not frame it as a matter of fairness.
“We just launched three weeks ago. If you are thinking about bringing tens of millions of users on-chain, bringing more utility, bringing things that people actually use and not just short-term volatility, then you are thinking about a long-term revenue source,” he said.
Competition with Base is not the focus yet
The interview also touched on comparisons between Robinhood Chain and Coinbase’s Base. Kerbrat said competition is ultimately good for customers.
“I think competition ultimately benefits customers. When we launched crypto trading, we cut fees by a lot. Right now it is still too early on-chain to talk about market share,” he said.
He noted that Robinhood Chain has been live for only three weeks, while Base has had a one- to two-year head start. He added that only a very small share of the global population holds tokenized assets today, so the larger opportunity is to expand the market rather than fight over a small existing base.
On Base’s social experiment, Kerbrat said trying new things is normal and that some attempts fail while others work. Robinhood, he said, is keeping its attention on financial products such as Earn, spot trading and perpetual futures.
How Robinhood chooses DeFi partners
The host cited launch partners announced alongside Robinhood Chain, including Morpho, Lighter, 0x, Chainlink and LayerZero.
Kerbrat said Robinhood uses three filters when selecting partners. First, partners need to understand the compliance requirements of a public company that holds licenses in multiple jurisdictions. Second, the work has to support a distinct user experience. Third, the partnership should create product differentiation.
Using Morpho as an example, he said the collaboration went well beyond plugging into an API. It involved customized stable rates, insurance mechanisms and dedicated UX work, requiring extensive joint development.
Asked when perpetual futures could enter Robinhood’s main U.S. app, Kerbrat said the company is still waiting for clearer regulation. Even if the CLARITY Act passes, he said, perpetuals would remain a separate and difficult issue.
For now, users can access perpetual futures through the partnership between Robinhood Wallet and Lighter. He also said Bitstamp, the European exchange acquired by Robinhood, is already expanding perpetual products from crypto into commodities and ETF contracts.
From brokerage app to a broader financial platform
The final part of the discussion turned to the investment case for $HOOD.
Kerbrat described Robinhood’s intended “super app” footprint as spanning stocks, options, futures, prediction markets, crypto, credit cards, banking services and AI agent trading. He said a platinum card had been announced that same day, and that MCP is already available for AI agent trading.
His pitch was that one app should eventually serve different financial needs across a user’s life stages. He also raised the gap in financial education, saying younger people are not taught enough about money in school even though they need to start thinking about retirement soon after graduation. He pointed to IRA accounts as one example of Robinhood’s approach.
On the business model, Kerbrat said every business line at Robinhood is already generating nine-figure revenue and that the company is no longer dependent on a single trading revenue stream.
As for chain revenue itself, he said the current priority is adoption, not maximizing near-term income. Gas pricing, in his telling, is a balancing act: set it too low and spam transactions and bots can abuse the system; set it too high and adoption suffers. For now, Robinhood Chain is being optimized for adoption rather than revenue.
He also said Robinhood does not expect all trading activity to move on-chain next year. “We don’t want to see all of Robinhood’s trading activity move on-chain next year. That would be a dream. But if we can find things the traditional way cannot do, like international stocks and 24/7 trading, then the chain can become the solution,” he said.