Robinhood Chain Testnet Puts Tokenized Markets At The Center Of Its Strategy

Robinhood has begun live testing its own blockchain, a network called Robinhood Chain that it hopes will become core infrastructure for trading tokenized assets around the clock. The new chain is built as an Ethereum layer 2 on Arbitrum and is currently running in public testnet form, where a limited set of developers and partners can deploy apps and stress the system. Executives say the goal is to turn Robinhood Chain into the plumbing that connects tokenized stocks and other real world assets with crypto style settlement, while still sitting on top of a familiar Ethereum Virtual Machine stack.  

In early testing the network has already processed more than four million transactions across close to one million wallets, according to Robinhood’s head of crypto Johann Kerbrat, who discussed the launch at ETHDenver. He framed the decision to build a proprietary chain as a way to gain full control over how tokenized products are designed and integrated, rather than relying entirely on third party infrastructure. Over time, more of Robinhood’s internal systems are meant to run directly on the chain, while customers interact through the main Robinhood app and its self custody wallet without necessarily realizing that their activity is settling on a separate network.  

The testnet marks a second phase in a tokenization push that began in Europe. In 2025 Robinhood launched commission free tokens linked to more than 200 United States stocks and exchange traded funds for European Union customers, issued on Arbitrum and tradable roughly twenty four hours a day, five days a week, with plans to expand both the asset list and trading hours. The company has presented tokenized equities and other real world assets as a way to give smaller investors flexible access to markets that usually run on limited schedules, and has said openly that it expects tokenization to reshape how securities are traded over time.  

Robinhood Chain is designed to remain compatible with the wider Ethereum ecosystem, which lets it tap existing liquidity and infrastructure while still offering customization at the protocol level. Kerbrat points to Ethereum security and decentralization as reasons to anchor the network on Arbitrum while using the proprietary layer for features Robinhood wants to control, such as how tokenized stocks plug into its global licenses, compliance stack and future products. The company has not set a firm mainnet date and is collecting feedback from developers first, but position papers from Robinhood and outside analysts already describe the chain as a way to extend its tokenization model and potentially route tokenized stocks into DeFi applications once regulation allows.  

The move drops Robinhood into a competitive field where exchanges like Kraken and others are also using tokenized securities and bespoke networks to blend traditional assets with crypto infrastructure. Supporters argue that owning the chain gives Robinhood a better chance to capture users and liquidity as tokenized markets grow. Critics say the strategy raises new questions about how much control a single broker should have over both the trading interface and the underlying settlement layer. What is clear is that Robinhood is no longer just integrating with blockchains from the outside, it is now trying to make its own network the rail on which a large share of its future tokenized business will run.