Robinhood Launches 'AI-Native' Ethereum Layer-2 Chain
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- Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an "AI-native" Arbitrum-powered Ethereum layer-2, with integrations from BitGo, Chainlink, Uniswap, and Pleiades for liquidity and prop trading.
- Robinhood Chain is designed to support trading by AI agents and unlocks Stock Tokens — tokenized, on-chain representations of shares in companies like Nvidia and Apple — for use in DeFi lending pools and as collateral, though the feature is not available to U.S. users.
- Robinhood expanded its Wallet with perpetuals trading via decentralized exchange Lighter, opened Robinhood Earn (lending stablecoin USDG for ~7% APY) to eligible U.S. users, and is now onboarding customers in Canada and Singapore with U.K. access "in the near future."
- HOOD shares climbed more than 8% Wednesday to $108.65, up nearly 20% over the past month but still trading more than 29% below the stock's 52-week high of $153.86.
- Robinhood cut roughly 10% of its staff last month after crypto revenue dropped 34% quarter-over-quarter, from $221 million to $134 million.
- Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood's SVP and General Manager of Crypto and International, said the chain is "bringing the best of traditional finance and DeFi together, and… expanding financial ownership to every corner of the globe."
Why it matters: HOOD's 8% pop gives Robinhood a much-needed win after last month's ~10% layoffs and a 34% quarter-over-quarter drop in crypto revenue. But the marquee Stock Tokens feature excludes the U.S., and the new Canada-Singapore-U.K. push signals where the firm is hunting its next customers beyond the existing ~28 million.
