Robinhood Chain Launches with Focus on Tokenized Assets and On-Chain Finance
Robinhood has launched its blockchain network, called Robinhood Chain, on July 1. This move is seen as a significant step in the company's plans to integrate traditional finance with decentralized finance (DeFi). With nearly 28 million customers globally, Robinhood is leveraging its user base to drive adoption of on-chain transactions.
The chain is built on Arbitrum's Orbit stack and uses Ethereum for gas. It targets block times of around 100 milliseconds, making it suitable for high-throughput, low-latency use cases such as continuous trading and DeFi primitives. The architecture is designed to support AI-driven financial applications, which will run natively rather than being bolted on.
Robinhood Chain has seen significant activity in its first few weeks, with memecoins dominating the landscape. Despite the initial design intent of focusing on tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), the chain's decentralized exchange (DEX) volume has been largely driven by memecoin trading. However, RWAs have started to gain traction, with their share growing from 0.39% in week one to 8.58% in the following week.
The launch of Robinhood Chain is part of a broader trend among fintech companies, which are moving away from renting blockspace and towards owning the underlying infrastructure. This shift is driven by the desire for control over fees, integration priorities, and the pace of the product roadmap for tokenized assets and on-chain finance.