---
title: "Tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain"
author: Mariusz Szyma
date: 2026-09-24
lang: en
canonical: https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/tokenized-stocks/
series: "RWA: Past, Present and Future"
series_part: 9/12
series_url: https://szyma.co/en/blog/rwa/
data_as_of: 4–10 Sep 2026
---

# Tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain

A tokenized stock is a token whose price follows a listed share, such as Nvidia or Apple, and which can be held in a crypto wallet and traded at any hour. In 2026 it became the fastest-growing corner of the RWA market, with millions of new holders and a broker, Robinhood, building its own blockchain around it. The token is usually not the share itself, and many of the new holders barely use it, so both facts need to be understood before the growth numbers mean anything.

## What you'll learn

- Explain what a tokenized share gives its holder and what it does not.
- Compare the main models: Backed's xStocks, Ondo's tokenized stocks, Robinhood's stock tokens and issuer-sponsored shares.
- Read holder counts and active addresses without mistaking sign-ups for use.
- Describe what Robinhood Chain is, what its numbers show, and where its fees come from.
- Name the signals that will decide whether tokenized stocks become a market or stay a promotion.

## What a tokenized share is, and what it is not

When you own a share through a broker, your ownership is a line in a chain of records that ends at a central securities depository. In the US that depository is the Depository Trust Company, DTC. You get the price moves, the dividends and, through your broker, a vote.

A tokenized stock puts a token in front of that chain. The token issuer buys the real share, or a claim on it, holds it with a custodian, and issues tokens that track it. The holder gains things a brokerage account cannot give: trading on weekends, transfers between wallets in seconds, and the ability to plug the token into other software, for example as collateral for a loan.

What the holder usually gives up is the share itself. In most models the token is a claim on the issuer, not a line in the company's shareholder register, and voting rights rarely come with it. The [first chapter](/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/) calls this the difference between a register and an IOU.

> **Example:** On 30 June 2025 Robinhood launched stock tokens for customers in the European Union, including tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX, two private companies. On 2 July OpenAI stated publicly that "these 'OpenAI tokens' are not OpenAI equity" and that it had not approved any transfer. Robinhood replied that the tokens gave exposure through its stake in a special purpose vehicle. Both statements were accurate, and together they show the gap between exposure and ownership.

A **perpetual futures contract** on a stock, the most traded form of stock exposure in crypto, goes one step further. It is a bet that follows a share price with no share behind it, so it fails the RWA test entirely.

## Four ways to build a tokenized stock

The models differ in who issues the token, what backs it and who may buy it.

| Model | Issuer and legal form | What backs it | Who can buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Backed](/en/blog/companies/backed/) xStocks and bStocks | Backed Finance, Switzerland, under a prospectus filed in Liechtenstein | shares held 1:1 by licensed custodians (company claim) | non-US, non-UK investors, mainly through exchanges such as Kraken and Bybit |
| [Ondo](/en/blog/companies/ondo/) tokenized stocks | a bankruptcy-remote company in the British Virgin Islands | shares held 1:1 at a US broker-dealer | non-US investors under Regulation S |
| [Robinhood](/en/blog/companies/robinhood/) stock tokens | Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, as tokenized debt securities | a debt claim tracking the share price, with no equity rights | customers outside the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland and the UAE |
| Issuer-sponsored shares | the listed company itself | the shares are the tokens | depends on the offering |

Backed launched xStocks around June 2025 on Solana and Ethereum, and the tokens trade on both exchanges and decentralized venues. Ondo launched its product, first called Ondo Global Markets, in September 2025 and renamed it Ondo Stocks in July 2026, by which time it listed more than 400 stocks and ETFs. Robinhood's tokens are plain ERC-20 tokens, the standard format for tokens on Ethereum-style chains, priced by [Chainlink](/en/blog/companies/chainlink/) feeds. Coinbase joined in August 2026 with its own tokenized stocks on Base, also priced by Chainlink.

The fourth model is the cleanest and the rarest. [Securitize](/en/blog/companies/securitize/), a tokenization firm, listed on the New York Stock Exchange on 2 July 2026 as SECZ and issued its own shares as tokens. On 23 September that one asset was the largest tokenized stock of all, at about 336 mn USD.

US regulators drew the same line in January 2026. A staff statement from the SEC, the US securities regulator, on 28 January 2026 separated issuer-sponsored tokenization from tokenization by a third party, and said securities law applies to a tokenized share "to the same extent" as to the traditional one.

## The market in September 2026

By value the segment is still small. RWA.xyz counted 3.14 bn USD of distributed tokenized stocks on 23 September 2026, up 18% in 30 days. Ondo led, followed by Backed's two product lines.

![Ondo leads tokenized stocks by value, ahead of Backed's bStocks and xStocks, RWA.xyz read 23 Sep 2026.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/tokenized-stock-platforms.6da77a97.svg)

Two facts temper that growth. Trading in stock exposure happens mostly elsewhere: CoinGecko's September 2026 report found perpetual futures on stocks trading about fifty times the spot market in tokenized stocks. And spot trading is concentrated, with ten assets accounting for 76.6% of volume.

The plumbing also showed its limits. When SpaceX went public in June 2026, exchanges that relied on xStocks had to cancel tokenized SpaceX offerings and refund more than 1 bn USD of orders, because the shared intermediary had not secured an allocation. Ondo was the only issuer to deliver a tokenized SpaceX on the first day, according to CoinGecko. A token is only as good as the issuer's access to the underlying share.

## Sign-ups are not use

**A holder** is an address that holds a token. **An active address** is one that sent or received it in the last 30 days. For a new product the gap between the two is the most honest number available.

| Reading | Holders | Active addresses (30 days) | Assets tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| RWA.xyz, 2 Sep 2026 | 2.54 million, +159% in 30 days | about 152,000, −90% in 30 days | 3,918 |
| RWA.xyz, 23 Sep 2026 | 3.87 million | about 2.8 million | 6,556 |

In the first reading, holders more than doubled while activity collapsed: roughly 17 holders for every active address. Three weeks later activity was back near the holder count. Both readings come from the same dashboard.

The mechanism explains the swing. Brokers and exchanges create holders in bulk with promotions and small grants; Robinhood's EU launch offered new users 5 EUR in private-company tokens. In August 2026 many newly listed tokens on RWA.xyz were Robinhood tokens carrying from a few hundred to about 12,000 USD of value each. Every such token creates holder records whether or not any money arrived. A campaign can then light up activity for a few weeks.

So treat a single month of either number with suspicion. The test that matters is whether active addresses stay near holders after the promotions end.

## Robinhood Chain: a broker's own blockchain

**Robinhood Chain** is a blockchain Robinhood launched on 1 July 2026 to host its stock tokens and the software built around them. It is a Layer 2. **A Layer 2** is a chain that runs transactions cheaply and quickly on its own and posts them in batches to Ethereum for final settlement. Robinhood Chain is built on Arbitrum's technology, produces blocks about every 100 milliseconds, charges gas in ETH and has no token of its own.

Two months after launch its numbers looked contradictory. It carried a small amount of capital and a very large amount of trading.

| Metric, 3 Sep 2026 | Robinhood Chain | For comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Value locked (TVL) | 796 mn USD | Base 5.50 bn, Solana 5.75 bn |
| DEX volume, 24 hours | 1.55 bn USD | Solana 2.33 bn, Ethereum 1.32 bn |
| Fees (network plus apps), 24 hours | 19.1 mn USD | Solana 11.2 mn, Ethereum 9.4 mn |
| Fees, 30 days | 145.9 mn USD | +46% on the previous 30 days |

**TVL**, total value locked, is the value of assets deposited in a chain's applications. **Rotation** is daily trading divided by TVL: how much of the parked capital changes hands in a day. Averaged over the 30 days to 3 September, Robinhood Chain traded about 85% of its TVL every day, more than twice Solana's rate and dozens of times Ethereum's. Single days ran higher: the 24-hour volume in the table is about twice the chain's TVL.

![Robinhood Chain traded about 85% of its locked value on an average day, against 37% on Solana and 2% on Ethereum: 30-day average daily DEX volume divided by TVL, DefiLlama data pulled 3 Sep 2026.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/robinhood-chain-rotation.ee7210a4.svg)

A popular claim says the chain overtook Solana. On trading volume it barely did. In DefiLlama's daily series, read on 24 September 2026, it beat Solana on only 3 of the 65 days from 1 July to 3 September, all of them from 1 September and by narrow margins, while beating Ethereum on 10 and Base on 20. Fees are the clearer case: after a single day in July, it out-earned Solana every day from 30 August to 7 September 2026.

## What the fees say

Fees show what people pay for, so they are the clearest view of what the chain is used for.

![Uniswap, two launchpads and a trading bot collected most of the fees on Robinhood Chain in the 30 days to 3 Sep 2026, DefiLlama data; fees are network plus app fees, not Robinhood revenue.](https://szyma.co/blog/img/robinhood-chain-fees-by-app.4b26b1dc.svg)

The top of the list is trading. Uniswap, a decentralized exchange, handled 83% of the chain's DEX volume. Next come launchpads, contracts that let anyone start a new token and trade it before it moves to a regular pool; the Pons launchpad took about 41 mn USD across two versions in 30 days. A trading bot, GMGN, earned 17 mn USD.

Most of this money follows new, speculative tokens. In July about 18,600 new tokens were being created on the chain each day, with a documented wave of scam tokens and impersonated tickers among them.

The stock tokens themselves are a smaller but more original part of the picture. Their value on the chain rose from about 12.8 mn USD in mid-July to more than 84 mn USD by 3 September. Because they are ordinary tokens, other software uses them freely.

Launchpads such as LONG.xyz pair new tokens against a stock token instead of ETH, and those pairings were about a quarter of stock-related volume. Morpho, a lending market curated by Steakhouse Financial, lets users borrow against stock tokens and held 489 mn USD, the largest position on the chain. Lighter, Robinhood's official perpetuals venue, reached 55.7 mn USD locked two weeks after launch.

> **Deep dive: Why the fee total is not Robinhood's revenue**
>
> DefiLlama's fee figure adds network gas to what every application charges its users: exchange fees, launchpad takes and bot commissions. Only the gas line goes to the network, and even that is shared: the network paid about 1.49 mn USD, about 10% of its 14.7 mn USD of gas, to Arbitrum under the Arbitrum stack's revenue share. DEX volume also excludes trading inside Robinhood's app and on centralized exchanges. The figures describe activity in contracts on the chain, not the company's income.

## What it means

Robinhood did not win on technology. Dozens of Layer 2 chains share the same specification. It won on three things a competitor cannot copy in a week: more than 23 million brokerage customers who can reach the chain from an app they already use, brokerage licences that let it issue stock tokens, and a listing path from its own chain into that app.

The risks are just as concrete. A 90-day gas subsidy ends in early October 2026, the first test of whether activity pays for itself. Robinhood runs the chain's single **sequencer**, the operator that orders transactions, and its contracts can be upgraded. The stock tokens are debt of a Jersey company rather than shares, and the Bank of Lithuania reviewed Robinhood's earlier EU tokens at launch.

> **My take:** Robinhood Chain is today a fast trading floor with good infrastructure, and the stock tokens are the reason it exists rather than the reason people come. The interesting part is small: a share that software can use as collateral, a pairing asset or an index component. If that part grows after the subsidy ends, Robinhood will have built the first real market for tokenized stocks. If it does not, the chain will look like every other memecoin boom.

## What to watch next

- **The end of the gas subsidy in early October 2026.** Volume and fees in the weeks after will show how much activity is organic.
- **Stock-token value on Robinhood Chain.** Growth from 84 mn USD, rather than memecoin volume, is the measure of whether the chain serves its stated purpose.
- **Active addresses against holders.** If the two stay close for several months, tokenized stocks have users, not just sign-ups.
- **The DTC tokenization pilot and exchange rules.** DTC's pilot, approved by an SEC no-action letter in December 2025, and the Nasdaq and NYSE rule filings for trading tokenized securities could bring tokenized shares that sit inside the official register. That would compete directly with the IOU models above.
- **Ondo's US custodial model.** In July 2026 Ondo and Broadridge launched tokenized securities for US investors that keep proxy voting through Broadridge. If that model scales, tokenized stocks start to carry the rights most of them lack today.

## Key takeaways

1. Most tokenized stocks are a claim on an issuer that holds the share, not the share itself, and they rarely carry voting rights.
2. The models differ in issuer, backing and who may buy; issuer-sponsored shares such as Securitize's are the only ones where the token is the share.
3. The segment is small by value and concentrated in a few names, and most stock trading in crypto happens in perpetual futures with no share behind them.
4. Holder counts can be manufactured with promotions; the lasting test is whether active addresses stay close to holders.
5. Robinhood Chain combines very little capital with very fast trading, and most of its fees come from speculative tokens rather than stocks.
6. Its advantage is distribution and licences, which competitors cannot fork; its risks are a single operator, upgradeable contracts and a legal structure that gives no equity.
7. Stock tokens as ordinary tokens make new things possible, lending against shares and pairing tokens with stocks, and that small part is what to follow.

## Glossary

- **Tokenized stock**: a token whose price follows a listed share, backed by that share or by a claim on the issuer.
- **Issuer-sponsored token**: a token issued by the company whose shares it represents, so the token is part of the official register.
- **Perpetual futures contract**: a contract with no expiry that follows a price without any asset behind it.
- **Holder**: an address that holds a token at a given moment.
- **Active address**: an address that sent or received the token in the last 30 days.
- **Layer 2**: a chain that executes transactions on its own and settles batches on Ethereum.
- **TVL**: total value locked, the value deposited in a chain's applications.
- **Rotation**: a day's trading volume divided by TVL.
- **Sequencer**: the operator that orders transactions on a Layer 2.

## Go deeper

- [What a tokenized real-world asset actually is](/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/): register, mirror and IOU, the three levels behind every model here.
- [RWAs in DeFi](/en/blog/rwa/rwa-in-defi/): lending against tokenized assets, including stocks on Solana.
- [Robinhood](/en/blog/companies/robinhood/), [Ondo](/en/blog/companies/ondo/) and [Backed](/en/blog/companies/backed/): profiles of the three main issuers.
- 🟢 SEC, "Statement on Tokenized Securities", 28 Jan 2026, https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/corp-fin-statement-tokenized-securities-012826-statement-tokenized-securities
- 🟢 DefiLlama, daily DEX volume and fees by chain (Robinhood Chain, Solana, Ethereum, Base), read 24 Sep 2026, https://defillama.com/chain/Robinhood%20Chain
- 🟢 DefiLlama, chains and fees dashboards, https://defillama.com/chains

## Sources

- 🟢 RWA.xyz, tokenized stocks, read 2 Sep 2026 and 23 Sep 2026 (value, holders, active addresses, platforms, SECZ), https://app.rwa.xyz/stocks
- 🟢 RWA.xyz, home page listings of new Robinhood assets, Aug 2026, https://app.rwa.xyz/
- 🟢 CoinGecko, "Tokenized Equities Report", Sep 2026 (perpetuals against spot, ten assets 76.6% of volume)
- 🟢 CoinGecko, "What Are Tokenized Stocks", Jul 2026 (SpaceX IPO refunds above 1 bn USD; Ondo delivery on day one)
- 🟢 SEC, "Statement on Tokenized Securities", 28 Jan 2026, https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/corp-fin-statement-tokenized-securities-012826-statement-tokenized-securities
- 🟢 SEC, Release No. 34-105260 (NYSE tokenized securities rule, referencing the DTC no-action letter of 11 Dec 2025), https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nyse/2026/34-105260.pdf
- 🟢 SEC, Release No. 34-105047 (Nasdaq tokenized securities rule), https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nasdaq/2026/34-105047.pdf
- 🟢 Backed Finance, product and legal pages, https://backed.fi
- 🟢 Ondo Finance, "Introducing Ondo Global Markets" and legal documentation, https://ondo.finance/blog/introducing-ondo-global-markets and https://docs.ondo.finance/ondo-global-markets/legal-and-regulatory
- 🟡 Genfinity, "Ondo Global Markets becomes Ondo Stocks", 13 Jul 2026, https://genfinity.io/2026/07/13/ondo-global-markets-becomes-ondo-stocks-tokenized-equities-leader/
- 🟢 Broadridge, Ondo custodial tokenized securities launch, 2 Jul 2026, https://www.broadridge.com/press-release/2026/ondo-finance-launches-first-ever-custodial-tokenized-securities-in-the-us
- 🟢 PR Newswire, "Coinbase Selects Chainlink To Bring New Tokenized Stocks to Millions of DeFi Users", 24 Aug 2026, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coinbase-selects-chainlink-to-bring-new-tokenized-stocks-to-millions-of-defi-users-302858414.html
- 🟢 RedStone, "RedStone brings Securitize's SECZ tokenized equity to Loopscale on Solana", 20 Aug 2026, https://blog.redstone.finance/2026/08/20/redstone-brings-securitizes-secz-tokenized-equity-to-loopscale-on-solana/
- 🟡 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
- 🟡 CNBC, "OpenAI says Robinhood's tokens aren't equity in the company", 2 Jul 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/openai-robinhood-tokens.html
- 🟢 Robinhood Chain documentation (launch date, Arbitrum stack, stock token issuer and country exclusions)
- 🟢 DefiLlama public API (chains, historical chain TVL, DEX volume, fees, protocols), pulled 3 Sep 2026, https://defillama.com

## Caveats

- Robinhood Chain figures are DefiLlama readings from 3 September 2026; fees combine network and app fees and exclude trading inside Robinhood's app.
- The day counts against Solana, Ethereum and Base come from DefiLlama's daily series for 1 July to 3 September 2026 and were not re-pulled later.