What Is Robinhood Chain? The Ethereum Layer-2 Network for Tokenized Stocks
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- Robinhood Chain launched on mainnet on July 1, 2026, built as an Ethereum layer-2 using Arbitrum's Dedicated Blockchains framework from Offchain Labs, with ETH as its native gas token and EVM compatibility.
- Robinhood Chain recorded over 17 million transactions, roughly 350,000 addresses, and more than $1 billion in decentralized exchange volume in its first week.
- Robinhood estimated the network's total value locked at $250 million, while independent tracker DefiLlama put core protocol TVL at approximately $94 million; stablecoin balances on the network climbed past $260 million.
- Robinhood Stock Tokens provide price exposure to stocks and ETFs but do not grant legal ownership or shareholder voting rights, and are unavailable to U.S. users—also restricted in Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland.
- Robinhood Chain uses a first-come, first-served sequencer rather than priority-fee bidding, and integrates with Uniswap (DEXs), Morpho (lending), and Chainlink (price oracles), plus infrastructure providers Alchemy, BitGo, and Paxos.
- Cash Cat (CASHCAT) meme coin drove part of the network's initial trading momentum, riding a surge in value after the chain went live.
Why it matters: Robinhood is fusing its brokerage stack with DeFi infrastructure, but the roughly 2.6x gap between its self-reported $250M TVL and DefiLlama's $94M read shows how thinly that $1B in DEX volume actually sits on the chain. Stock Tokens deliver price exposure without legal ownership or voting rights—a product explicitly walled off from U.S. users and restricted in Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland.
