Robinhood Chain Attracts Same Traders, Not New Users: ARK Study

Research by ARK Invest's director of research for digital assets, Lorenzo Valente, found that most activity on Robinhood Chain comes from existing on-chain traders rather than new cryptocurrency users entering through Robinhood. The study analyzed contract-level data to determine which smart contracts generated transactions on the network.

The data showed that less than 1% of analyzed transactions on Robinhood Chain were linked to Robinhood Wallet users, and even when allowing for unidentified contracts, this figure rose to only about 5%. This suggests that most trading activity on the chain comes from external platforms such as GMGN and OKX.

GMGN is a trading terminal that allows users to access newly issued tokens and other speculative assets across several blockchains, while OKX offers a Web3 wallet and decentralized exchange tools. The study found that these platforms are responsible for most of the identifiable volume on Robinhood Chain outside of the 0x Settler route.

Valente's analysis concluded that Robinhood Chain is attracting 'the same degens' to a new blockchain, rather than introducing a separate group of users to on-chain markets. He emphasized that his findings concern transaction origins rather than user counts, and that wallets can interact through aggregators or custom contracts, making it difficult to identify the original source of transactions.