Robinhood launches its own blockchain, no longer wanting to be a tenant on others' chains

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On July 1, Robinhood held a press conference to announce a series of new products all at once.

The Layer 2 public chain Robinhood Chain's public mainnet has officially launched. This is a network built on Arbitrum, aimed at tokenizing real-world assets and DeFi applications.

Users can trade tokenized stocks on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Rialto, Lighter, and 1inch on Robinhood Chain, and use these assets in DeFi scenarios, including as collateral for loans or depositing into liquidity pools for returns.

With the mainnet launch, Robinhood's Stock Tokens are also fully open. Users can use related products through Robinhood Wallet in over 120 countries, with specific availability varying by jurisdiction.

At the same time, Robinhood launched Robinhood Earn. This product allows users to lend USDG stablecoins through self-custody wallets, with an expected annual yield of about 7%. The underlying lending infrastructure is provided by Morpho, with support from DeFi protocols such as Steakhouse, Ethena, Spark, and Maple. The official statement also mentioned the introduction of an insurance mechanism to reduce risk exposure.

In addition, Robinhood announced the expansion of its European perpetual futures products, covering commodities, ETFs, and foreign exchange markets, and plans to launch crypto trading in the UK. After acquiring WonderFi, Robinhood's services have also entered the Canadian market.

Image source: RootData

In the US market, Robinhood launched Agentic Accounts for crypto users. Qualified users can connect AI models to Robinhood's trading infrastructure while retaining control over fund allocation and trading parameters.

On the day of the press conference, Robinhood's stock price rose by 8.35%, and it continued to rise in after-hours trading.

This is not just an ordinary update of crypto products. Robinhood is gradually integrating stocks, cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets, stablecoin yields, perpetual futures, and AI trading tools into the same financial account system. The company's past core identity was as a zero-commission brokerage; now, it is moving closer to becoming an everything exchange.

The significance of Robinhood Chain lies here. It is not just an additional Layer 2; more importantly, Robinhood does not want to be merely a front-end on someone else's chain in the long term.

In recent years, financial companies entering the crypto industry have commonly connected to existing public chains, with platforms responsible for users, interfaces, and product packaging, while underlying settlement, gas, liquidity, and DeFi applications occur on external networks.

This model allows for rapid startup and leverages existing ecosystems. However, for financial platforms that already have a large user base, a long-term issue arises: users are in their own apps, but assets and settlements are on someone else's territory.

For Robinhood, this issue is particularly sensitive. It has nearly 28 million funded accounts, and users have developed habits around stock, options, and crypto trading. This means Robinhood is no longer just a stock trading app; it is transforming into a comprehensive financial entry point covering multiple asset classes and various trading forms.

In this context, launching its own chain becomes a natural extension. If Robinhood only directs users to external DeFi, it remains just a channel provider. If tokenized stocks, USDG lending, AI agent trading, and more RWA products operate on its own chain, it can gain deeper control over trading, settlement, collateral, yields, and asset flows.

The platform's transformation from an interface provider to a financial infrastructure owner represents a deeper change.

After the launch of Robinhood Chain, protocols such as Uniswap, 1inch, Lighter, Morpho, Chainlink, BitGo, Ethena, and EtherFi have successively connected, covering trading, liquidity, lending, oracle, custody, and cross-chain aspects.

More notably, the new DEX Arcus launched by dYdX chose to deploy on Robinhood Chain rather than on dYdX's own chain. This decision sparked controversy within the dYdX community and indicates that institutional chains are competing not only for end users but also for protocols, liquidity, and product attention.

This is also why more and more financial companies are starting to launch their own chains. Circle launched Arc to tighten control over the circulation and settlement track of USDC. Coinbase launched Base to keep users, assets, and developer activities within its own ecosystem. Robinhood Chain represents brokerages and retail trading platforms beginning to compete for the on-chain settlement layer of tokenized assets.

Their asset endowments differ, but they face the same problem. Without building their own settlement layer, they risk becoming tenants on someone else's chain instead of masters of user and asset entry.

This wave of chain launches is also different from the previous round of public chain enthusiasm. In the last round, the market focused more on TPS, ecosystem incentives, and financing narratives. Now, financial companies launching chains are focused on stablecoin payment gas, compliance privacy, RWA issuance, on-chain collateral, AI agent trading, institutional settlement, and internalizing yields.

However, for Robinhood, what is truly worth paying attention to may not only be Robinhood Chain.

Just last month, Robinhood announced a 10% layoff of its staff, about 290 people, expecting to incur around $20 million in severance and benefits restructuring costs, as well as about $8 million in stock compensation expenses. CEO Vlad Tenev stated that the company's business situation is currently very strong, but it must avoid excessive institutional hierarchy and maintain a lean and highly focused team.

While cutting organizational costs, Robinhood is intensively launching new businesses, sending a clear signal: it does not want to be just a zero-commission brokerage or merely a crypto trading entry; it aims to keep more trading, issuance, settlement, and yield processes within its own system.

The backdrop to all this is that due to shrinking institutional trading volumes, Robinhood's cryptocurrency trading revenue is significantly declining, nearly halving to $134 million in the first quarter, and is expected to fall below this figure in the second quarter. Currently, the company's revenue growth is mainly due to a surge in prediction market revenue.

According to analyst Dr. Crossroads, as of June 25, Robinhood's second-quarter event contract trading volume has reached approximately 12.3 billion contracts. Based on a revenue share of 1 cent per contract, this business is expected to generate at least $123 million in revenue for the quarter, with an annualized revenue potentially reaching $500 million, likely making this the first time this business's revenue exceeds its cryptocurrency trading business.

Its newly launched prediction market platform Rothera has surpassed 900 million contracts in trading volume in its first week, bringing nearly 60% of potential contract trading increment to the company. At the same time, the company plans to reduce the fee from 2 cents per contract to 0.6 cents, using price advantages to retain both trading volume and revenue within its ecosystem.

Ultimately, the press conference speaks of ambition, while the financial report speaks of reality. While it is certainly important how many developers Robinhood Chain can attract, whether the prediction market can continuously fill the revenue gap left by crypto spot trading will also affect the market's re-evaluation of the company.

For Robinhood, the real question is no longer just whether it can launch a chain, but whether it can turn stocks, crypto, prediction markets, tokenized assets, stablecoin yields, and AI trading into a sustainable business within the same account system.