- Robinhood has formally launched the general public mainnet for Robinhood Chain, its new Layer-2 blockchain constructed on Arbitrum.
- The corporate additionally rolled out tokenized shares, decentralized lending, and AI-powered crypto buying and selling instruments.
- The enlargement alerts Robinhood’s push to change into a full-service on-chain monetary platform past conventional brokerage providers.
Robinhood has formally launched the general public mainnet for Robinhood Chain, marking the corporate’s most bold transfer but into blockchain-based finance. Introduced throughout an occasion in London, the brand new Layer-2 community is constructed on Arbitrum and is designed to help tokenized real-world property, decentralized finance (DeFi), and next-generation monetary purposes.
The launch comes roughly 4 months after Robinhood started testing the blockchain and represents a significant milestone within the firm’s technique to evolve from an internet brokerage right into a broader digital asset ecosystem.
Robinhood Chain Goes Reside
Robinhood Chain is designed to convey conventional monetary property onto blockchain infrastructure whereas enabling quicker and extra versatile buying and selling.
With the general public mainnet now stay, Robinhood’s tokenized inventory merchandise are totally operational. Customers in additional than 120 nations can entry Inventory Tokens by Robinhood Pockets, though availability varies relying on native rules.
The corporate says customers will ultimately have the ability to commerce tokenized equities across the clock whereas utilizing them throughout decentralized finance purposes, together with lending platforms and as collateral for different monetary merchandise.
Robinhood Introduces DeFi Lending
Alongside the blockchain launch, Robinhood unveiled Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product constructed round its dollar-backed stablecoin, USDG.
The service permits customers to lend USDG straight from a self-custody pockets whereas incomes an estimated annual share yield (APY) of seven%.
By combining self-custody with on-chain lending, Robinhood is increasing past easy cryptocurrency buying and selling into decentralized monetary providers historically supplied by native DeFi protocols.
AI Buying and selling and World Growth
Robinhood additionally introduced a number of further initiatives aimed toward increasing its international crypto footprint.
The corporate plans to broaden perpetual futures buying and selling throughout Europe by including commodities, ETFs, and international alternate merchandise alongside cryptocurrencies.
Robinhood additionally confirmed plans to launch cryptocurrency buying and selling in the UK whereas increasing operations into Canada following its acquisition of WonderFi.
One other main announcement was the introduction of Agentic Accounts, an AI-powered buying and selling device that can permit eligible U.S. clients to attach synthetic intelligence fashions to Robinhood’s buying and selling infrastructure whereas sustaining full management over capital allocation and buying and selling methods.
Robinhood Needs to Turn into an Every thing Alternate
The launch highlights Robinhood’s broader technique of mixing conventional finance with blockchain expertise.
Over the previous a number of years, the corporate has steadily expanded past commission-free inventory buying and selling into cryptocurrencies, derivatives, prediction markets, tokenized property, and decentralized finance.
Robinhood seems to be positioning itself as an “all the pieces alternate,” providing a number of asset courses and monetary providers by a unified platform more and more powered by blockchain infrastructure.
The enlargement additionally comes shortly after Robinhood introduced plans to cut back its workforce by roughly 10%, a transfer the corporate stated was meant to streamline operations whereas focusing sources on long-term progress initiatives.
As tokenization and decentralized finance proceed attracting institutional and retail curiosity, Robinhood’s newest launch locations the brokerage amongst a rising variety of conventional monetary corporations constructing straight on blockchain networks.
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