Original Title: "Robinhood's Bold Move into L2, Focusing on RWA Tokenization"
Original Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
At the end of January 2026, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev revisited the shocking "GameStop short squeeze" that rocked Wall Street five years ago on social media and candidly stated: if real-time settlement capabilities with blockchain technology had existed then, that "pulling the plug" moment that angered countless retail investors could have been avoided.
Just two weeks later, Robinhood officially announced the launch of the public testnet for Robinhood Chain based on Arbitrum, which will support the tokenization of real-world assets, including stocks, ETFs, private equity assets, and other financial instruments.
Choice of Architecture: Why Arbitrum?
In its architectural choice, Robinhood opted to build the Ethereum Layer 2 network Robinhood Chain based on Arbitrum Orbit, utilizing Ethereum Blob to ensure data availability, with ETH as the native Gas token.
Robinhood understands that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Arbitrum offers EVM compatibility, allowing existing DeFi protocols and wallet infrastructures to migrate at almost no cost. More importantly, Arbitrum Orbit enables Robinhood to create a "dedicated chain," which possesses independent governance rights and customizable logic (such as compliance review) while sharing the unassailable security consensus of the Ethereum mainnet.
This is crucial for Robinhood, which needs to meet financial regulatory requirements. It can implement compliance rules on-chain, restricting access to specific wallet addresses while remaining connected to the largest capital reservoir on Ethereum.
Even more critical is that as early as mid-2025, Robinhood had already trialed its tokenized stock business on Arbitrum. Now, launching its own chain on Arbitrum is a natural progression.
Robinhood's Exploration of Tokenized Stocks
Before the Robinhood Chain testnet went live, Robinhood conducted an "experiment with tokenized stocks" in the European market for 8 months.
Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Robinhood Crypto, stated at the Consensus 2026 conference that Robinhood has launched approximately 2,000 tokenized stocks and ETF products in the European market, covering mainstream US stocks and ETF products. In the future, it plans to tokenize real-world assets such as private equity, real estate, and art to enable 24/7 trading and instant settlement.
According to Dune data, as of February 9, the total value of Robinhood's tokenized stocks is currently $15.1 million, with a cumulative trading volume of $74.43 million. Of course, this scale may not seem large.
The Operating Truth: How Does Robinhood "Put" US Stocks on the Chain?
· Underlying Architecture: These tokenized stocks are initially issued on Arbitrum and will fully migrate to Robinhood Chain in the future.
· Intrinsic Nature: These tokenized stocks do not represent actual ownership certificates, but rather derivative contracts linked to the prices of the underlying stocks or ETPs. This means the tokens held by users will track the movements of US stocks, but users do not own the corresponding stocks.
· Issuance and Destruction Mechanism: When users buy US stock derivative contracts on Robinhood, the platform immediately generates corresponding fungible tokens on the blockchain, representing ownership of that contract, but these tokens cannot be transferred to others. Once the contract is closed, the platform directly destroys the corresponding token on the blockchain, and the record is updated immediately, rendering that token completely void.
· Dividend Penetration: Although users do not own the stocks, Robinhood has achieved dividend penetration. When the underlying stocks pay dividends, the system will automatically distribute the dividends in cash to the investors' accounts.
· Compliance Armor: Robinhood's ability to legally launch tokenized stocks in Europe is due to its extensive regulatory preparations:
1. In June 2025, Robinhood spent $200 million in cash to acquire Bitstamp. The core value of this acquisition lies in the MiFID multilateral trading facility (MTF) license held by Bitstamp in Slovenia.
2. By mid-2025, Robinhood secured the EU MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) license and Lithuania's MiFID brokerage license.
Consequently, Robinhood's tokenized stocks are hosted by Bitstamp.
In terms of trading thresholds and costs, these tokenized stocks have a very low entry requirement, starting from just 1 euro; trading hours cover 5*24, and during non-trading periods, users can place orders in advance, which will automatically execute when the market opens. Regarding fees, Robinhood implements a zero trading commission and zero spread policy, only charging a 0.1% foreign exchange fee during transactions, minimizing trading costs for users.
The "Second Half" of Financial Democratization
If the first half of Robinhood's journey was marked by its reputation for "zero commission," then the second half focuses on "eliminating barriers of time and space."
The core narrative of Robinhood Chain is the complete on-chain representation of RWA (real-world assets). Its significance is reflected in three dimensions:
· 24/7 Market: Robinhood Chain brings US stocks into the crypto time dimension, allowing capital flows to no longer be restricted by Wall Street's hours.
· Instant Settlement: Faster transaction confirmation speeds.
· Asset Composability: This is the greatest realm of imagination. Imagine that in the future, you can not only hold Tesla stocks but also deposit them into the Aave or Compound protocol as collateral to borrow USDC to buy coffee. The attributes of assets are completely unleashed. Of course, at this stage, the stock tokens on Robinhood cannot be transferred to other digital wallets or trading platforms.
· No Permission Required: The design philosophy of Robinhood Chain is permissionless and developer-friendly. Anyone can interact with the network, build applications, and deploy smart contracts.
· Dissolution of Global Investment Barriers: An investor in Southeast Asia can participate in the growth dividends of top global companies through Robinhood Chain with very low friction costs.
Unavoidable Challenges and Variables
However, the journey to the new world still has several "high walls":
· Legal Ambiguity in Asset Definition: Currently existing only in a "derivative" form, rather than direct tokenization of underlying securities, there remains a degree of legal opacity.
· Unique Counterparty is Robinhood Europe: Robinhood Europe is the sole counterparty for these financial derivatives, and this concentration could pose potential liquidity and credit risks. However, Robinhood's official documents indicate that Robinhood will purchase US stocks or ETFs at a 1:1 ratio to hedge the risk of the US stock derivatives it issues.
· Closed Nature of the Ecosystem: Robinhood Chain currently exhibits strong centralized control characteristics, as its service terms explicitly state that the platform can reset, restrict, or revoke access privileges to specific wallets at any time. While this design is necessary to meet compliance requirements, it contradicts the core spirit of Web3 decentralization, placing it in the debate of "compliance versus decentralization imbalance." However, decentralization and compliance are inherently contradictory to some extent; this point is indisputable. In recent months, Robinhood's open approach to tokenized stocks has been continuously amplified.
· Resistance from Third-Party Companies: Earlier, OpenAI publicly stated that it "does not recognize" the legitimacy of certain tokenized equity. This reveals the core contradiction of RWA: the recognition of rights between third-party companies and the asset tokenization party (Robinhood).
Conclusion
The launch of the testnet for Robinhood Chain did not trigger a frenzy in the crypto industry, but it might be a revolution brewing beneath the surface.
When a giant like Robinhood, deeply involved in traditional retail finance, starts seriously laying out blockchain and promoting the on-chain representation and trading of real-world assets, the clear boundary between traditional finance and crypto finance is being gradually blurred and dissolved.
Whether Robinhood Chain will become a super entry point connecting traditional finance and Web3, or fall into a closed "island" due to an excessive focus on compliance, remains to be seen.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
