Robinhood Crypto Lead Outlines Strategy for New Layer-2 Chain and Tokenized Assets
Robinhood Crypto General Manager Johan detailed the brokerage firm's permissionless Layer-2 blockchain, which aims to bring its 28 million funded accounts onto Web3 infrastructure, tokenized real-world assets, and DeFi yield vaults.
In a recent interview, Johan, General Manager of Crypto at Robinhood, outlined the strategic vision behind the brokerage platform’s newly launched permissionless Layer-2 blockchain. Built on the Arbitrum stack and secured by Ethereum, the chain surpassed 115 million transactions and $500 million in total value locked within its first three weeks. Designed for deep integration with both the main Robinhood app and its self-custody wallet, the network aims to transition the brokerage's 28 million funded accounts into on-chain financial activities.
A core pillar of the network's offering is the expansion of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), including more than 90 stock tokens tradable 24/7 across 120 countries. Robinhood has also rolled out features such as Robinhood Earn, which leverages Morpho vaults to offer roughly 7% yields on stablecoins like USDG, integrated with smart contract insurance underwritten via Lloyds of London. Additionally, the network incorporates an AI-first framework, providing Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces to support automated AI agent trading across equities and digital assets.
Addressing network operations, Johan confirmed that the chain is entirely permissionless, allowing external developers to launch applications without restriction. While Robinhood collects sequencer and transaction fees from network activity, the company currently has no plans to issue a native network token, choosing instead to foster ecosystem growth through developer hackathons and strategic integrations.