Robinhood chain goes live: 24/7 tokenized stocks, DeFi yields, and global expansion redefine retail investing

Robinhood’s strategic decision to build a custom Ethereum Layer 2 on Arbitrum was driven by a pragmatic engineering mindset that prioritized leveraging Ethereum’s proven security and decentralization rather than the costly and complex task of creating a new Layer 1 blockchain. By tapping into Ethereum’s long-established, stable network, Robinhood effectively ‘got security for free,’ ensuring a robust foundation for its tokenized asset ambitions while maximizing user access and regulatory compliance.

Access to Ethereum’s extensive liquidity and the EVM-compatible ecosystem was a critical enabler for Robinhood’s vision of seamless tokenized stock trading. Avoiding isolated or closed-loop chains that require cumbersome bridging, Robinhood leveraged Arbitrum’s compatibility to facilitate frictionless asset movement and liquidity sharing, a necessity underscored by their goal to ‘bring the stock market into the chain’ without imposing multiple bridging hoops on users.

Arbitrum’s flexible developer environment and transaction prioritization aligned perfectly with Robinhood’s need for a customizable platform that could meet specific product and regulatory compliance requirements. This strategic choice allowed Robinhood to transition smoothly from initial product launches on Arbitrum 1 to their own Robinhood Chain mainnet, balancing innovation speed with long-term scalability and control over compliance features like KYC, sanctions, and jurisdictional exclusions.

Launching Robinhood Chain from a position of financial strength—highlighted by $1.07 billion net revenue and 27.4 million funded customers in Q1 2026—enabled the company to experiment boldly with tokenized assets while carefully managing the inherent complexity of legally mediated wrapped claims. Robinhood’s challenge lies in simplifying the user experience to feel global and accessible, even as the underlying infrastructure remains intricately tied to traditional financial controls and regulatory frameworks.

Robinhood’s strategic partnerships have been pivotal in transforming its platform into a comprehensive financial super-app that bridges traditional finance and decentralized finance. Beginning with its 2025 collaboration with Morpho to launch 'Earn,' Robinhood enabled its 27 million users to access competitive DeFi yields, such as 7% on USDG stablecoin deposits, through a non-custodial wallet, signaling a shift towards leveraging crypto as an infrastructure layer to replace centralized financial services. This foundational philosophy underpins Robinhood’s broader vision of integrating protocol-level software to lower costs and enhance reliability across its offerings.

By early 2026, Robinhood deepened its TradFi-DeFi integration through a significant $68 million investment in Lighter, a move that not only underscored their commitment to tokenizing traditional assets like US equities but also aimed to solve liquidity challenges in real-world asset perpetual futures by combining institutional expertise with DeFi innovation. This partnership facilitated the deployment of a custom instance of Lighter’s perpetual futures exchange on the Robinhood Chain, enabling leveraged exposure up to 20-50x within a user-friendly wallet interface and expanding 24/7/365 market access for tokenized stocks, particularly in European and Canadian markets where regulatory clarity is more advanced.

Robinhood’s acquisition of Bitstamp further bolstered its infrastructure by integrating regulated non-crypto perpetual futures and exchange capabilities directly into its ecosystem, particularly within the Robinhood Europe app. This multi-partner approach allows institutions to purchase tokenized stocks backed one-to-one with underlying assets, supporting dividends and corporate actions, while enabling seamless on-chain functionalities such as collateralization, peer-to-peer transfers, and interoperability with Ethereum layer one via bridges. As a result, Robinhood has created a permissionless yet regulated environment that dramatically improves upon traditional brokerage processes like ACAT transfers, evidenced by the Robinhood Chain processing over a million transactions within 24 hours of launch.

The integration of 1inch as a launch partner on the Robinhood Chain in July 2026 introduced an innovative intent-based execution layer that addresses the unique liquidity and custody challenges of tokenized real-world assets. By enabling professional resolvers to compete in Dutch auctions without taking custody of assets, 1inch enhances efficient routing and execution of tokenized equities, a market that surged past $1 billion in the latter half of 2025. This collaboration not only expands Robinhood’s DeFi infrastructure but also supports a growing ecosystem where tokenized stocks and funds can be traded seamlessly through dApps, wallets, and third-party apps leveraging 1inch’s Swap API.

Robinhood Chain debuted as an AI-native Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on Arbitrum’s Orbit technology, designed to underpin Robinhood’s expanding tokenization and crypto ecosystem. Launched publicly in July 2026 after months of testing, the chain rapidly gained traction with nearly $79 million in total value locked and over $568 million in on-chain trading volume within its first eight days. This infrastructure supports a growing catalog of tokenized real-world assets, including nearly 2,000 tokenized US stocks and ETFs such as NVDA, GOOG, and AAPL, enabling 24/7, 365-day trading that transcends traditional market hours and settlement delays.

By leveraging blockchain’s instant settlement and fractional ownership, Robinhood Chain empowers users to seamlessly transfer tokenized stocks, use them as collateral in DeFi lending pools, and engage in hedging or lending activities without the multi-day delays typical of traditional brokerage transfers. This composability is bolstered by integrations with DeFi platforms like Uniswap and Morpho, allowing tokenized stocks to be traded within decentralized exchanges and enabling users to earn approximately 7% APY on USDG stablecoin deposits through a non-custodial, mobile-first Robinhood wallet that competes with MetaMask.

Robinhood’s ownership of the tokenization engine confers a strategic advantage, allowing immediate listing of new IPOs as companies go public, thus enhancing asset availability and user engagement. The platform thoughtfully integrates tokenized assets alongside traditional stocks within a familiar interface, clearly signaling the crypto technology underpinning these offerings to avoid user confusion. While tokenized stocks and perpetual futures are currently unavailable to U.S. users due to regulatory uncertainties, Robinhood anticipates regulatory clarity by 2027, positioning the chain for broader adoption.

The launch of Robinhood Chain signifies a pivotal evolution in Robinhood’s ambition to become a financial super-app, blending AI and blockchain to democratize access to on-chain financial products. Partnerships with Chainlink for oracle services and BitGo for custody, alongside integrations with decentralized perpetuals DEX Lighter and Lyra’s ZK Layer 2 desks, underscore a robust ecosystem designed to bridge traditional brokerage services with crypto innovations. Wall Street’s positive reception, including raised price targets from Mizuho and Piper Sandler, reflects confidence in Robinhood’s disruptive potential within both traditional and decentralized finance landscapes.

By early 2026, Robinhood had aggressively expanded its tokenized stock offerings in Europe, growing from roughly 400 to over 1,500 tokenized public stocks, with ambitions to generate more than half of its revenue from international markets within a decade. This global push is underpinned by a multi-phase strategy that includes broadening tokenized equities, integrating with Bitstamp for 24/7 trading, and enabling advanced decentralized finance (DeFi) functionalities such as self-custody and collateralized lending, signaling a comprehensive effort to democratize access to on-chain finance worldwide.

Navigating the complex regulatory landscape, Robinhood has tailored its approach to different jurisdictions: in the US, where tokenization of private companies remains illegal, it launched Robinhood Ventures with a closed-end fund to provide regulated private market exposure, while offshore markets like the EU and UK benefit from tokenized stocks backed one-to-one by real trades. Despite ongoing delays from the SEC on domestic on-chain stock trading, Robinhood anticipates regulatory clarity by 2027, bolstered by partnerships with entities like Lighter pursuing US licenses and advisory ties to the CFTC to ensure compliance.

Robinhood’s international expansion is methodical and technology-driven, progressively launching regulated tokenized products in Europe, Canada, and the UK, often country by country due to licensing complexities. The company leverages its proprietary Robinhood Chain—a layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum launched in mid-2026—and the Robinhood Wallet, available in over 100 countries, to accelerate global access to perpetual contracts with leverage up to 50x and a 24/7 marketplace for US equities, effectively blending traditional custody frameworks with crypto-native infrastructure to reduce liquidity and settlement friction.

Despite its ambitious global footprint spanning 160 countries, Robinhood’s tokenized assets remain legally mediated financial instruments, subject to jurisdiction-specific regulations, KYC controls, and custodial frameworks. This nuanced approach reflects Robinhood’s goal to create a consumer-friendly financial stack that simplifies user experience while managing the underlying legal complexities, all while maintaining a financially strong core business driven by traditional retail trading products, allowing blockchain innovation to unfold as a complementary growth surface rather than a lifeline.

By early 2026, Robinhood had laid a robust foundation for an expansive ecosystem around Robinhood Chain, integrating diverse financial innovations such as prediction markets for sports and weather-based contracts, which aim to disrupt traditional insurance with faster, cheaper alternatives. Simultaneously, the company advanced tokenization by offering over 1,500 tokenized public stocks in Europe and planning seamless integration with Bitstamp for 24/7 trading and DeFi interoperability, reflecting CEO Vlad Tenev’s vision to reduce liquidity and settlement frictions and generate more than half of revenue outside the U.S. This ecosystem also embraces cutting-edge AI through Harmonic, an AI co-founded by Tenev, which has achieved breakthroughs like solving open Erdős problems, positioning AI as a strategic lever for future programmable finance and market innovation.

Addressing liquidity and accessibility challenges of on-chain stock tokens, Robinhood employs a sophisticated multi-source order routing system that connects fragmented liquidity pools across exchanges and market makers to maintain price pegs and deepen market depth. Their phased rollout—from non-transferable to fully on-chain transferable tokens—demonstrates a cautious yet scalable approach, evidenced by rapid growth from 200 to over 2,000 stock tokens within a year. This liquidity foundation is critical to unlocking new financial services like lending and leveraged trading up to 10x on major stocks such as Google and Tesla, while regulatory clarity expected by 2027 promises to open U.S. markets to these innovations.

Robinhood’s strategic $68 million investment in Lighter and the development of a custom ZK Layer 2 solution on Ethereum underscore its commitment to bridging TradFi and DeFi by enabling interoperable tokenized equities and perpetual futures markets. This collaboration not only enhances liquidity and institutional participation but also supports a user-friendly, mobile-first self-custodial wallet competing with MetaMask, integrating yield-generating stablecoins like USD G with attractive 7% yields via Morpho. Such programmable finance capabilities, combined with perpetual contracts offering up to 50x leverage on commodities and ETFs, position Robinhood Chain as a rapidly growing DeFi hub that could surpass competitors like Base within a year.

The Robinhood Chain ecosystem is evolving into a comprehensive platform for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and programmable finance, supported by active developer engagement through hackathons and partnerships with execution layers like 1inch. With over 21 million testnet transactions and millions of smart contracts, Robinhood is fostering an open environment inviting third-party innovation around tokenized collateral markets, index products, and perpetual contracts. The integration of 1inch’s intent-based execution model simplifies complex RWA trades into single transactions, expanding access to over 2,000 tokenized stocks and addressing a rapidly growing market that saw tokenized equities surpass $1 billion in 2025. This native integration and wide distribution uniquely position Robinhood Chain to bridge the siloed crypto market with traditional finance, making it a compelling early bet for the future of on-chain finance.