The contest is shifting to distribution
One of the hottest new public chains of 2026 did not come from a crypto-native company, according to MarsBit. It came from brokerage firm Robinhood, which launched its own chain in July 2026 and crossed $100 million in total value locked within seven days.
The article places Robinhood alongside two other moves. In December 2025, Kraken acquired Backed Finance, the issuer behind tokenized stock product xStocks. Telegram then pushed those tokenized U.S. equities into its messaging ecosystem. MarsBit’s argument is that these companies are not mainly fighting over the assets, the tech stack, or even licenses. They are fighting over the screen where users tap “buy.”
Chains and issuers are getting commoditized
The report says tokenizing stocks is not a new idea. Earlier attempts, including Mirror’s synthetic assets and FTX’s stock tokens in 2020, ran into regulatory pressure and ecosystem collapse. In those cases, users were buying price exposure rather than the stock itself.
This cycle looks different because the assets are described as real. MarsBit says Robinhood and Superstate have backed the ERC-8056 standard so stock splits and dividends can be handled at the smart-contract layer. It also says Ondo has partnered with proxy voting company Broadridge, allowing token holders to vote in shareholder meetings with private keys.
The piece also points to composability. A tokenized NVIDIA stock position, for example, can be deposited into a lending protocol to borrow stablecoins and deploy them into yield strategies. Assets that once sat idle in a brokerage account can now move through DeFi.
On size, the article cites Boston Consulting Group as forecasting that global tokenized assets could reach $10 trillion by 2030. It adds that on-chain real-world assets had surpassed $31.4 billion by mid-2026, up nearly fivefold from early 2025. Chainalysis, it says, has also reported a sharp rise in new Ethereum wallets created specifically to receive RWA tokens.
MarsBit breaks the stack into three layers: base infrastructure and custody, including Ethereum, Solana and BitGo; issuers such as Backed, Dinari and Ondo, which map real shares 1:1 into tokens; and the top distribution layer that faces end users. Its conclusion is that the first two layers are getting squeezed, while the firms that own the user entry point stand to capture more of the value.
Those firms can charge listing fees, route users into their own wealth, derivatives or lending products, and hold influence over secondary-market liquidity. MarsBit says Kraken’s purchase of Backed should be read in that context. The article says Backed accounts for about 24% of the compliant tokenized stock market.
Robinhood Chain’s first week drew deposits, not just speculation
MarsBit says capital has already made its choice. In Robinhood Chain’s first week, a meme coin called CASHCAT posted nearly $98 million in daily trading volume, while network-wide DEX volume reached $560 million in a day. On the surface, that looked like a typical speculative chain.
The TVL mix told a different story, according to the article. Of the $100 million locked on the chain, $90 million sat in lending protocol Morpho, supporting roughly 7% annualized yield through Robinhood Earn. In MarsBit’s framing, about 90% of that money came in to save rather than to gamble.
The article links that flow to Robinhood’s 27.6 million brokerage accounts, describing it as savings capital quietly entering DeFi through a new pipe. It also says major protocols are lining up around the brokerage. Morpho handles lending, while perpetuals are provided by Lighter. MarsBit says Lighter signed a 12-year deal, agreed to a 50-50 fee split, and airdropped tokens worth $11 million to Robinhood users.
On the technical side, the chain is built on the Arbitrum stack, has 100-millisecond block confirmation, and uses ETH for gas. Robinhood has also opened AI agent trading to eligible U.S. users, allowing automated monitoring and execution of arbitrage and yield strategies around the clock.
Brokerage app in the U.S., chat window elsewhere
The same business is taking very different shapes across markets. In the United States, Robinhood hides DeFi behind a familiar brokerage interface. Users buying tokenized stocks do not need to deal directly with private keys, bridges or gas fees.
In places such as Lagos or Buenos Aires, the article says the story flips. A retail investor trying to buy Apple stock would previously have faced offshore account setup, foreign exchange controls and expensive wire transfers. Now that purchase can happen inside the TON wallet built into Telegram, in a flow that looks as simple as sending a message.
MarsBit says TON has nearly 100 million wallet users and Telegram has 1 billion monthly active users. Kraken’s xStocks, acquired through Backed, is being distributed into emerging markets through that channel. The article also says SK Hynix’s record $26.5 billion U.S. listing was quickly made available to Telegram users through xStocks.
It adds that stock tokens can be embedded into mini apps inside group chats and used for tipping or payments, giving financial assets a social distribution model that bypasses traditional gatekeepers.
U.S. regulation remains the hard ceiling
For all the momentum, MarsBit says all three players share the same problem: they still cannot fully enter the U.S. market. In January 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said tokenization does not change the nature of a security, and tokenized stocks still fall under securities law.
As a result, Robinhood’s stock tokens are issued through a Jersey trust and are only available to non-U.S. users. Kraken’s xStocks, built on a Swiss structure, also avoids the domestic U.S. market. MarsBit notes that Kraken is preparing for a U.S. IPO in 2026 and had previously spent $1.5 billion to acquire traditional broker NinjaTrader. Buying an issuer adds to that Wall Street story, but the inability to sell the product at home remains a limitation.
The article contrasts that with Dinari, a smaller company that has obtained a transfer agent license in the United States, allowing it to legally sell tokens backed by real shares and package that capability as an API. Ondo, meanwhile, has taken another route by keeping the underlying stocks inside a compliant U.S. custody chain and only mapping ownership on-chain, a structure the article says aligns with the SEC’s relatively friendlier view of the “third-party custody model.”
The buy button may matter most
MarsBit’s final point is straightforward: the market may be overvaluing the technology story behind putting assets on-chain while undervaluing the monopoly value of distribution. Standards for splits and dividends, oracle systems and legal structures matter, but they can be copied or competed away. What is harder to replicate are 27.6 million bank-linked brokerage accounts and a chat app opened daily by 1 billion people.
Its conclusion is that the internet did not kill brokers; brokers learned zero-commission trading. DeFi, in this reading, has not killed brokers either. Brokers are turning DeFi into their back end.