The Robinhood chain is Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) Powered by the proprietary Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain, its public mainnet went dwell on July 1, 2026. It’s constructed to maneuver tokenized shares, DeFi merchandise, and AI-driven buying and selling onto a community that connects on to Robinhood’s app and self-custody wallets. The corporate flipped the swap at a keynote speech in London referred to as “The World is Flat,” and HOOD inventory rose greater than 8% after the occasion.
What’s much more attention-grabbing is that there is nothing new right here. Below branding, Robinhood Chain is a fairly normal Layer 2. This story is not in regards to the expertise, it is about who’s driving tens of millions of customers to the expertise.
What’s the Robinhood chain constructed on?
robin hood chain It runs on Arbitrum’s Orbit expertise, the identical stack behind many customized Layer 2 networks. settle the transaction Ethereum As an optimistic rollup, we’ll use ETH to pay for gasoline. There are not any separate Robinhood Chain tokens for governance or charges, at the least none that the corporate has introduced.
This design offers the safety of Ethereum whereas maintaining prices decrease than the bottom layer. Robinhood claims that the block time is round 100ms, which is quick for Layer 2 and meant for buying and selling. The community is totally appropriate with Ethereum instruments, permitting builders to deploy normal instruments. good contract with out rewriting.
Robinhood didn’t invent new cryptography or consensus. Identical to Coinbase did, we took a confirmed infrastructure and tailor-made it for finance. baseNevertheless, Base is on the OP stack. choice.
What are you able to truly do?
The chain was launched with a set of ready-made monetary merchandise reasonably than an empty developer sandbox. The headline options Inventory Tokens.
Fairness tokens are structured as tokenized bonds that monitor. US shares and ETF like NVDA, googleand AAPL. These give financial publicity to the underlying shares, however don’t confer authorized possession or shareholder rights. These can be found in additional than 120 international locations via Robinhood Pockets, however are usually not obtainable to People or in some restricted markets. Eligible customers can commerce them 24 hours a day and use them as collateral. DeFi Within the app or mortgage pool.
Along with tokens, this launch bundles a number of different components.
- Lending and borrowing via Robinhood Earn is a Morpho-powered product that enables eligible U.S. customers to make loans. $USDG The stablecoin trades at an estimated 7% APY. The indemnity organized via Lloyd’s of London and RELM is meant to guard in opposition to cyber or good contract loss.
- Spot buying and selling via built-in exchanges.
- agent buying and selling. Customers can join AI brokers to their accounts. Robinhood extends this from shares and choices to cryptocurrencies.
@chain hyperlink Serves because the official oracle layer and cross-chain layer. Different day-one companions embody Uniswap, which has launched a devoted market maker, together with Pleiades, Alchemy, BitGo, and Morpho.
What about perpetual futures?
Perpetual futures are a part of the identical extension, however are usually not a part of the chain itself. Robinhood’s European division (@RobinhoodApp_EU) is regulated by the Financial institution of Lithuania and has made perpetual futures buying and selling obtainable to eligible clients on its app and web site. The product spans 20 contracts, 13 cryptocurrencies and 7 shares, and options as much as 10x leverage, according to regulatory limits, in response to Robinhood. Positions are traded 24 hours a day, closed each quarter-hour, and margin could be obtained in euros or {dollars}.
How new is that this?
Probably not, and that is the purpose. It’s now a typical sample for main fintechs and exchanges to launch their very own app-specific Layer 2 networks. The technical choices listed here are secure and off-the-shelf.
What Robinhood brings is distribution. The corporate is a regulated dealer with operations in 38 international locations and serves roughly 28 million clients. In distinction, the corporate’s pockets makes fairness tokens obtainable in additional than 120 international locations as self-custody avoids the licenses required for brokerages. Most tokenized asset tasks battle to search out customers reasonably than concepts. Robinhood is transferring its current infrastructure from brokerage accounts to self-custody wallets and on-chain protocols like Uniswap and Morpho.
There are additionally unanswered questions alongside the way in which. Inventory tokens are debt securities reasonably than actual shares, which prevents entry from the US and invitations regulatory consideration in different international locations. 7% $USDG Financial institution deposit insurance coverage doesn’t apply to yields. AI brokers with entry to dwell brokerage accounts are merchandise that aren’t but regulated by regulators.
Nonetheless, Robinhood brings one thing that almost all Layer 2s by no means get: a built-in viewers and a full launch accomplice. Subsequent, you must convert that attain into precise on-chain transactions.
supply of knowledge
- robin hood Official newsroom announcement on Robinhood Chain mainnet, inventory tokens, and proxy buying and selling
- robinhood europe Assist web page detailing EU Perpetual Futures merchandise, contracts, leverage and margin guidelines
- chain hyperlink Press launch confirming Arbitrum Orbit construct and Chainlink oracle function
- day-after-day Evaluation on distribution, RWA context, and noteworthy metrics
