Robinhood Launches Public Blockchain in Deeper Push Into Decentralized Finance
Online brokerage giant Robinhood has launched Robinhood Chain, a public blockchain built on Arbitrum technology, deepening its push into decentralized finance. The initiative is designed to offer tokenized stock trading and Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product, in more than 120 countries. It bridges traditional finance and Web3 while marking Robinhood's formal entry into the global race to tokenize real-world assets.
In its first week on mainnet, Robinhood Chain attracted more than $70 million in bridged Ether. Its total value locked surpassed $100 million just nine days after launch, while a memecoin trading frenzy drove a record surge in transaction volume. The momentum has laid the groundwork for Robinhood's effort to bring 10 million retail investors into decentralized finance.
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The history behind this eventRobinhood Chain’s $16.78 Million Fee Haul Rekindles Ethereum Value Debate
Robinhood Chain is a Layer 2 network designed to support Robinhood’s expansion into onchain trading and digital assets while relying on Ethereum for settlement and data availability. The arrangement has become a test case for Ethereum’s rollup-centric strategy: Layer 2 operators can control customer relationships and transaction flows, but the base network may capture only a small share of the resulting economics.
During the week covered by the latest report, Robinhood Chain charged users $16.78 million in fees while paying just $2,008 to Ethereum for settlement and data storage, equivalent to about 0.012% of the amount collected. The disparity has intensified debate over value capture as Layer 2 activity expands. The difference should not be treated as net profit, however, because operating expenses, user incentives and other costs were not disclosed.
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