Robinhood launches blockchain for round the clock stock trading

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Robinhood launched the public mainnet for Robinhood Chain on Wednesday, marking its biggest move into onchain financial infrastructure as the company expands beyond its brokerage business.

The announcement came during Robinhood’s “The World is Flat” event at the Old Royal Naval College in London. Robinhood shares jumped more than 8% following the announcement, trading around $108 at press time.

Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum layer-2 network built using Arbitrum technology and designed for tokenized real world assets and decentralized finance applications. The permissionless network was previously released as a public testnet in February, with Robinhood describing it as financial infrastructure built for tokenized assets, lending platforms and perpetual futures exchanges.

Uniswap will deploy a dedicated automated market maker to serve as one of the chain’s primary public liquidity protocols, while Pleiades will operate a separate venue for proprietary trading. The network also includes integrations with Alchemy, BitGo and Chainlink, according to the company.

Robinhood also launched a new generation of Stock Tokens that eligible users can hold and trade through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries. The assets can trade around the clock and may be used across decentralized applications, including lending markets and as collateral.

The Stock Tokens are debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets Jersey Limited that track the economic performance of underlying securities. Holders do not receive legal ownership, voting rights or other shareholder rights connected to the underlying stocks.

Robinhood’s earlier tokenized equity products will now be called Classic Stock Tokens and will remain available through its European app. Those products provide exposure to more than 2,000 stocks and exchange traded products, but cannot currently be transferred to external wallets.

The company also introduced Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product that allows eligible US users to lend the USDG stablecoin through a self custody wallet. The product advertises an estimated 7% annual yield, with lending infrastructure provided by Morpho and additional support from Steakhouse, Ethena, Spark and Maple. The estimated yield is variable and not guaranteed.

Robinhood Wallet is also adding access to perpetual futures through the Ethereum based decentralized exchange Lighter. The companies allocated $11 million in LIT tokens for a rewards program tied to eligible trading activity.

In Europe, Robinhood plans to expand beyond crypto derivatives with a phased rollout of commodity, exchange traded fund and foreign exchange perpetual futures. The offering will include markets linked to gold, silver, oil, major currencies and equity indexes, subject to regional eligibility requirements.

Robinhood also announced Agentic Accounts for crypto, which will allow eligible US users to connect outside AI models to dedicated trading accounts. Customers can decide how much capital an agent controls and establish parameters governing its activity. Robinhood previously introduced similar agent powered tools for equities and options.

The company is also expanding internationally. Robinhood formally entered Canada after completing its acquisition of WonderFi in June and said it plans to launch crypto trading in the UK.

The expansion comes weeks after Robinhood cut about 10% of its workforce as part of a restructuring expected to generate $28 million in charges. Its crypto transaction revenue also fell 47% from a year earlier to $134 million during the first quarter, even as total company revenue increased 15% to $1.07 billion.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

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