A Fast Start, By Any Measure
The new crypto platform by Robinhood, Robinhood Chain, launched on July 1 and has already garnered extraordinary attention and adoption. The company’s general manager for crypto Johann Kerbrat reported that it achieved a total value of $450 million plus processed over 95 million transactions within its first three weeks. This number, according to Kerbrat, was surprising even to his team, given the relative calmness of the crypto market at the time of the launch.
Unlike other crypto platforms which have to rely on their appeal to crypto-native users, Robinhood has an inherent advantage of having already acquired 26 million plus brokerage accounts. In other words, they do not have to convince anybody to use blockchain; rather, they have already persuaded people to buy cryptocurrencies and want to offer them additional services via their own on-chain products.
Among these products are the following:
- Stablecoin lending: This feature allows the users to convert their dollar deposits into stablecoins with just a few taps. They have already raised around $100 million with an annual percentage yield of around 7%.
- Tokenized US stocks: These stocks are available via the Robinhood Wallet and can be used by the more than 120 countries where Robinhood operates to gain exposure to the stock market with 24-hour trading and almost instantaneous settlement, as opposed to traditional markets.
- Memecoins: They are being actively promoted as a source of liquidity, wallet addresses, and market makers ahead of the launch of other products.
Johann Kerbrat described his company’s blockchain as a general-purpose technology, which can eventually be used to port almost any asset type, including real estate or private equity, while remaining virtually invisible to the end-consumer, who would not have to interact with blockchain directly.
Who's Utilizing It
Once a month has passed, usage statistics have complicated the ‘tokenized stock’ narrative that Robinhood has followed. According to research from DWF Labs, the total number of tokenized stock holders across all platforms exceeded (up 92%) 752,000 by the end of July. The ‘tokenized stocks’ marketing strategy has surely worked for Robinhood, which has become America’s largest tokenized stocks distributor, accumulating 328,000 holders (44% market share since the launch on July 1).
As DWF Labs explains, the division indicates the target audience of each participant, with Robinhood and xStocks primarily addressing retail customers, while Securitize and Figure targeting institutional clients. In addition, Robinhood markets meme coins rather than shares, as the tokens PONS ($44.7 million market cap) and CASHCAT ($39.9 million market cap) significantly overshadow the total value of stock tokens on Robinhood Chain, as its top 10 tokens are now worth about $123 million, which is almost three times more than the total value of stock tokens issued on the platform.
Robinhood Chain After One Month
According to the first-month data, while the platform reached significant adoption, speculated assets are still more valuable than the flagship tokenized stock offering of Robinhood.
| Metric | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| TVL | $450M | Strong launch liquidity |
| Transactions | 95M+ | High network activity |
| Stablecoin Lending | $100M | Early DeFi adoption |
| Tokenized Stock Holders | 328,000 | Largest retail platform |
| Tokenized Stock Value | $44M | Surprisingly small |
| Top 10 Token Value | $123M | Mostly memecoins |
| Revenue Generated | $2M+ | First month |
| Revenue to Arbitrum | $200K | 10% protocol share |
The Arbitrum Arrangement Nobody's Pricing In
There is one detail, buried in the structure, that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough. Namely, that Robinhood Chain is built on Arbitrum’s Orbit, and that under the Expansion Program, any Orbit chain that settles outside of Arbitrum’s main chain routes 10% of net revenue back to Arbitrum, 8% to its DAO treasury, and 2% to a dev fund.
The value of this detail is illustrated by the fact that the chain has already sent over $2 million in cumulative revenue since launch, with roughly $200,000 in fees to Arbitrum, and on an annualized basis, Arbitrum’s share would be worth $4 million a year. Against Robinhood’s own quarterly revenue of about $1.27 billion – a figure too small to matter, but one that nonetheless illustrates a critical dynamic. One where a company that prides itself on disintermediating the financial system now has a critical dependency on another company, in the form of a 90-day gas subsidy – and one that is skewing both volume and revenue figures in the process.
Next Up to Watch
- October is the time when Robinhood gas subsidies come to an end, therefore providing the first accurate view of the actual income without the subsidies.
- The ability of tokenized equity trading to bridge the gap between the activity of meme-coin trading tokens on-chain.
- The visibility of Arbitrum’s revenue-sharing in Robinhood’s regulatory reports.
