The crypto industry saw multiple developments this week. Robinhood debuted the public testnet for its Ethereum L2 blockchain, Robinhood Chain, built on Arbitrum, with mainnet planned later this year. The network will support tokenized real-world assets such as equities and ETFs, allow 24/7 trading, and let users self-custody assets in Robinhood’s wallet while bridging to DeFi apps on Ethereum. Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s SVP and GM of crypto, said L2s were never solely about scaling Ethereum.
Citadel Securities Backs LayerZero
LayerZero Labs unveiled Zero, a blockchain for institutional-grade markets, alongside a strategic investment from Citadel Securities into ZRO. ARK Invest also invested in LayerZero equity and ZRO, with CEO Cathie Wood joining an advisory board. Tether Investments made a strategic investment as well. Citadel Securities is evaluating Zero’s architecture for high-throughput trading and post-trade workflows. Zero uses a heterogeneous architecture with zero-knowledge proofs, claiming ~2 million TPS and sub-millionth-of-a-dollar transaction costs.
MegaETH Mainnet Debuts
MegaETH, a “real-time blockchain” targeting over 100,000 TPS, launched its mainnet—far above Ethereum’s current ~30 TPS. MegaLabs raised a $20M seed round in 2024 led by Dragonfly, and a $450M oversubscribed token sale in October 2025 backed by Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin.
ENS Scraps L2 Rollup Plans
ENS abandoned its planned L2 rollup Namechain and will deploy ENSv2 exclusively on Ethereum mainnet. Founder Nick Johnson cited drastically lower gas costs on the base layer after scalability improvements, making the original rationale for a dedicated rollup obsolete.
Kraken Fires CFO, Jump Trading Bets on Prediction Markets
Kraken dismissed CFO Stephanie Lemmerman as the exchange prepares for a U.S. public listing. Lemmerman, who joined in November 2024, was replaced by Robert Moore. Kraken confidentially filed with regulators last November after an $800M raise at a $20B valuation.
Bloomberg reported that Jump Trading will take small equity stakes in Kalshi and Polymarket in exchange for providing liquidity. Jump’s Polymarket stake will grow based on trading capacity provided to its U.S. operations. The firm has hired 20 staff for its prediction market business.