Robinhood's L2 blockchain went live with tokenized equities and 7% DeFi lending. The stock jumped 5% but stays well off highs. July 29 earnings will test if new products can offset a halved crypto revenue line.
Robinhood Markets (HOOD) launched its own blockchain network Wednesday, rolling out decentralized lending and AI-powered trading tools alongside tokenized equity shares. HOOD closed about 5% higher on the session, though the stock still trades 30% below its October record.
The product push came at a London event and forms part of Robinhood's broader international expansion. The company said crypto trading will open in the UK soon. Services are already live in Canada after the WonderFi acquisition. In Europe, perpetual futures now cover commodities, ETFs, and currencies, not just crypto.
Robinhood Chain, a Layer-2 network built on Arbitrum (ARB), went live after four months of testing. The company described it as "AI-native and purpose-built for real-world assets" in a tweet. Stock Tokens – tokenized equity shares – are available in more than 120 countries through the Robinhood Wallet. Users can trade them 24/7 and deploy them as collateral inside DeFi lending protocols. Chief Executive Vlad Tenev has called tokenized equities "inevitable," saying they could sidestep the trading halts that sometimes hit conventional exchanges.
The firm also launched Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending platform that lets customers lend USDG, the company's own dollar-pegged stablecoin, through a self-custody wallet. The estimated annual yield is 7%, a rate that competes with established DeFi lenders. For qualified U.S. clients, Robinhood introduced Agentic Accounts, an AI-driven trading system that lets users link AI models to the platform while maintaining control over funds and trade parameters. The distinction matters for regulatory compliance – the user, not the AI, remains the counterparty.
The blockchain rollout arrives weeks after Robinhood disclosed a 50% year-over-year drop in cryptocurrency transaction revenue for the first quarter, from $252 million to $134 million. The company also cut roughly 10% of its workforce, about 290 positions, in late June. The new offerings aim to generate fee income from lending interest and tokenized-asset trading, areas that could offset the declining crypto transaction line.
Robinhood steps into a competitive L2 market. Base, the Coinbase-backed blockchain, ranks as the second-largest L2 by total value locked at roughly $11 billion. Base suffered two outages in June tied to a sequencer malfunction. Robinhood's own chain will need to prove reliability to attract meaningful volume.
The company's Alpha Score stands at 44 of 100, labeled Mixed, within the Financials sector. The stock page is available here. For more on how the tokenized equity structure works, see Robinhood Tokenized Stocks: Economic Exposure, No Ownership.
Robinhood reports second-quarter results on July 29. The earnings call will offer the first look at whether the blockchain and DeFi push is shifting revenue mix.
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