The Rise of Robinhood Chain: Tokenized Stocks, Perps, and 27M Users | Johann Kerbrat

Robinhood announced 15 products in a single day at a London event called The World is Flat, including Robinhood chain, tokenized stocks, expanded perpetuals, and a stablecoin yield product. Hood stock rose approximately 8 to 10 percent on the day. CEO Vlad Tenev framed the announcements around using blockchain to remove financial inequality and extend access to US markets globally.

Robinhood chain is an Arbitrum orbit chain built with Off Chain Labs, offering low gas fees, acceptable latency, and Ethereum's underlying security. Arbitrum Stylus allows developers to write smart contracts in Rust rather than being limited to Solidity. The chain recorded approximately one million transactions within less than 24 hours of its public launch announcement, and Kerbrat noted that Robinhood's existing 27 million users are already attracting developer interest, reversing the typical dynamic where new chains chase developers.

Tokenized stocks on Robinhood chain are backed one to one, carry dividend and corporate governance rights, and are permissionlessly transferable across the Ethereum ecosystem including bridges to Ethereum Layer 1 and other Layer 2s. The system currently runs through Bitstamp, which connects to institutions that mint stock tokens and bring them onto DEXes including Uniswap, which is a launch partner and displays Robinhood tokenized stocks inside its interface for 24/7/365 trading. Transfers between wallet addresses do not require the receiving party to be KYC'd with Robinhood. The only mandatory Robinhood interaction is minting or redeeming a token for the underlying stock or cash equivalent. Redeeming directly for a share inside a Robinhood brokerage account is not yet available but is being developed for institutions. Kerbrat noted that traditional ACATS transfers take days or weeks and can destroy cost basis, whereas on-chain transfers preserve all information. The US is not included in the tokenized stock system yet. Stock tokens can be used as collateral on chain and Kerbrat expects lending pools to form around them.

Robinhood Earn offers approximately 7 percent yield on USDG deposits routed into Morpho vaults on the Robinhood chain, with Steakhouse as curator and eCNA among supporting partners. USDG is issued by Paxos and Robinhood is a founding member of the Global Dollar Network, which distributes treasury revenue to network members rather than concentrating it with the issuer. Kerbrat attributed the elevated yield to Robinhood's scale and partner market makers creating new pools with elevated demand, and said significant time was spent with partners to ensure the rate would hold. Depositing through the main Robinhood app automatically creates a self-custody smart wallet with exportable private keys, and the Morpho vaults are also accessible directly on-chain without the app.

Robinhood launched seven new perpetual contracts including Silver, Gold, and QQQ, expanding perp access to EU and Canadian customers. Non-crypto perpetuals are offered through Bitstamp and Robin Europe under MiFID licenses with up to 10x leverage. Kerbrat described regulated perpetuals as one of Robinhood's stickiest products in Europe and noted that Bitstamp and Robin Europe are among the only regulated platforms offering perpetuals with customer support and regulatory oversight. Robinhood is waiting for CFTC clarity before adding perpetuals to the main US app. Crypto-native perpetuals inside the Robinhood wallet are integrated with Lighter at 20x to 50x leverage depending on the contract. Lighter engineers built a custom instance settled on the Robinhood chain rather than pointing to the Lighter ZK Layer 2. Lighter committed approximately 11 million dollars worth of LID tokens starting August 1st for a rewards program, with users trading through the Robinhood wallet earning two points versus one point for users trading directly on the Lighter interface.

Robinhood wallet is explicitly designed for users who have never been on chain rather than competing with Phantom or MetaMask for existing crypto users. Kerbrat argued that blockchain was built by engineers for engineers and that complexity around passphrases, bridges, fees, and DEX connections excludes roughly 99 percent of the population. The wallet supports fiat funding via Apple Pay and Google Pay without requiring users to send crypto first. Kerbrat predicted that traditional financial clearing systems will gradually be replaced by blockchain infrastructure and that the main Robinhood app and Robinhood wallet will converge over time. Additional wallet announcements are expected by Q3 at a Texas event.