--- title: "Robinhood" author: Mariusz Szyma date: 2026-09-24 lang: en canonical: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/robinhood/ series: "Companies in stablecoins and RWA" series_part: 17/26 series_url: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/ data_as_of: Sep 2026 --- # Robinhood Robinhood is a US retail broker that sells tokenized US stocks to customers outside the United States and runs its own blockchain, Robinhood Chain. It matters because it is the first large broker to put its own stock product on a public chain, and to bring a retail customer base with it. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | Founded | 2013, by Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt | | Headquarters | Menlo Park, California, United States | | Layer | Broker and distributor; issuer of stock tokens through a Jersey subsidiary; operator of a Layer 2 chain | | Key products | Stock Tokens (for EU and other non-US customers), Robinhood Chain, Robinhood Wallet | | Scale (with date) | Robinhood Chain held 796 mn USD of value locked and traded 1.55 bn USD a day on its exchanges on 3 September 2026 (DefiLlama) | | Competes with | Ondo Global Markets, Backed (xStocks) and Kraken, Coinbase and Base | ## What it does On 30 June 2025, at an event in Cannes, Robinhood switched on more than 200 stock and ETF tokens for customers in the European Union and the wider EEA. The tokens first ran on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2, and Robinhood announced its own chain at the same event. **A Stock Token** on Robinhood's chain is an ordinary ERC-20 token with Chainlink price feeds. It needs no special standard or allow-list to move. Legally it is a tokenized debt security issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, giving economic exposure to the share price, not shareholder rights. The tokens are offered in more than 120 countries, excluding the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the UAE. **A Layer 2** is a chain that executes transactions cheaply on its own and posts them to Ethereum for final settlement. Robinhood Chain went live on 1 July 2026, built on Arbitrum's Orbit stack, and Arbitrum receives 10% of its network fees. Robinhood Wallet connects the chain to the broker's more than 23 mn customers, with no seed-phrase setup. ## How it is different Robinhood owns the distribution. Ondo and Backed issue tokens and rely on wallets and exchanges to find buyers. Robinhood already has the customers and the app, which is the same advantage Coinbase used to grow Base. It built a chain for trading, not for storage. Two months after launch, the chain held 796 mn USD, about a seventh of Base, but turned over 85% of that value in DEX trades on an average day over the previous 30 days, against 37% on Solana and 2% on Ethereum. From 30 August 2026 its combined network and application fees passed Solana's for more than a week. On daily DEX volume it beat Solana on only 3 of its first 65 days, all from 1 September, according to DefiLlama's series read on 24 September 2026. The stock token became a DeFi building block. On the chain, users borrow against stock tokens on Morpho, trade perpetual futures on Lighter, and launch new tokens paired against a stock token instead of ether or a stablecoin. Robinhood has issued no chain token. It pays for growth with subsidies instead: a 90-day gas subsidy, developer grants and incentives from partners. ## Where it fits [Tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain](/en/blog/rwa/tokenized-stocks/) tells the full story, with the data behind each number. [Which blockchains RWAs live on](/en/blog/rwa/chains/) places an issuer-run Layer 2 among other chain choices. [What a tokenized real-world asset actually is](/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/) explains why a debt token that tracks a share differs from owning the share. [Getting prices on-chain](/en/blog/rwa/oracles-and-nav/) covers the price feeds stock tokens depend on. Related profiles: [Ondo](/en/blog/companies/ondo/), [Backed](/en/blog/companies/backed/) and [Chainlink](/en/blog/companies/chainlink/). ## Risks and open questions The legal structure is the weak point. Stock Tokens are debt from a Jersey company, with no equity rights. The SEC's January 2026 statement on tokenized securities separates this kind of third-party construction from shares issued by the company itself, and the Bank of Lithuania asked questions about Robinhood's earlier tokenized products. The chain is centralized. Robinhood runs the only sequencer, **the operator that orders transactions** before they go to Ethereum. Withdrawals to Ethereum take seven days, and the contracts can be upgraded. Much activity is speculative. Launchpad fees and memecoins paired with stock tokens drive a large share of fees, and those follow attention cycles rather than lasting capital. The subsidies end. The 90-day gas subsidy runs out in early October 2026, the first honest test of organic demand. ## What to watch next - **Activity after the gas subsidy**: volume and fees in October 2026 show how much of the chain's lead was paid for. - **Stock-token value on the chain**: it grew from about 12.8 mn USD in mid-July to over 84 mn USD by 3 September 2026, and it is the number that tests whether the chain serves its original purpose. - **A decentralized sequencer**: a plan to hand ordering to more than one operator would reduce the largest technical risk. - **US access**: any path for US customers to hold stock tokens would change the size of the market overnight. ## Sources - 🟢 DefiLlama, daily DEX volume and fees by chain, read 24 Sep 2026, https://defillama.com/chain/Robinhood%20Chain - 🟢 DefiLlama API (`v2/chains`, `overview/dexs`, `overview/fees`, `protocols`), pulled 3 Sep 2026, https://defillama.com/chain/Robinhood%20Chain - 🟢 Robinhood, "Robinhood Launches Stock Tokens, Reveals Layer 2 Blockchain", 30 Jun 2025, https://seekingalpha.com/pr/20152206-robinhood-launches-stock-tokens-reveals-layer-2-blockchain-and-expands-crypto-suite-in-eu-and - 🟢 SEC, "Statement on Tokenized Securities", 28 Jan 2026, https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/corp-fin-statement-tokenized-securities-012826-statement-tokenized-securities - 🟡 CoinDesk, "Robinhood pushes deeper into crypto with own blockchain, tokenized stock launch", 30 Jun 2025, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/06/30/robinhood-pushes-deeper-into-crypto-with-own-blockchain-tokenized-stock-launch - 🟡 Press coverage, Jul to Sep 2026, on Robinhood Chain's gas subsidy, grants and the Bank of Lithuania's questions on earlier tokenized products - 🟢 SEC EDGAR, Robinhood Markets, Inc., annual report on Form 10-K (founding year, headquarters)