Inventory and cryptocurrency buying and selling platform Robinhood introduced the launch of its public mainnet about 4 months after it started testing the community.
On Wednesday, the corporate stated Robinhood Chain, a layer 2 (L2) blockchain constructed on Arbitrum, had formally launched after the community went dwell on testnet in February. The blockchain, which the corporate described as “AI-native and purpose-built for real-world belongings,” comes amid Robinhood’s growth of crypto- and decentralized finance-related providers.
In response to Robinhood, it plans to launch crypto buying and selling within the UK quickly. The corporate additionally stated that its tokenized inventory merchandise had been dwell and obtainable by way of its pockets app to customers in additional than 120 nations. CEO Vlad Tenev referred to as tokenized shares “inevitable” in January, arguing that providing the merchandise may assist forestall buying and selling freezes that typically happen on conventional exchanges.
Supply: Robinhood
The launch of the general public mainnet got here just some weeks after Tenev introduced that Robinhood would minimize 10% of its workforce as a part of a restructuring transfer. The corporate is anticipated to announce its 2026 second-quarter outcomes on July 29, however reported in April that its crypto transaction income dropped by virtually 50% year-on-year, from $252 million to $134 million.
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The corporate additionally launched Robinhood Earn, a decentralized product that permits customers to lend USDG, a dollar-backed stablecoin, by way of a self-custody pockets at an estimated 7% annual share yield. Robinhood shares rose about 8% on Wednesday.
Base’s L2 community stories back-to-back outages
Robinhood is coming into an more and more aggressive L2 market dominated by networks reminiscent of Base, the Coinbase-backed blockchain.
In June, Base skilled two outages inside hours of one another, which the engineering staff later reported had been the results of a sequencer bug. The mainnet is the second-largest layer 2 community by whole worth secured at about $11 billion.
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