Robinhood Pushes TradFi On-Chain with New L2, Tokenized Stocks
Robinhood is making a major on-chain play, launching a testnet for its own Layer-2 and expanding tokenized stock offerings to 2,000 U.S. equities for 24/7 trading. In an interview, its GM of Crypto detailed a strategy that includes perpetuals, lending, and a major expansion into Asia via its acquisition of Bitstamp.
The new Layer-2, named Robinhood Chain, is built using Arbitrum's technology and its public testnet went live on February 11, 2026. Key infrastructure partners like Chainlink, Alchemy, and LayerZero are already integrating with the testnet ahead of a planned mainnet launch later in the year. This network is specifically designed to embed regulatory compliance directly into the blockchain's base layer. This approach is intended to streamline the handling of tokenized securities, where rules for minting and trading can differ significantly across various jurisdictions. The expansion to nearly 2,000 tokenized assets is currently for European customers and was built up from an initial offering of 200. These assets, which are derivatives mirroring the price of the underlying stock or ETF, are initially issued on Arbitrum but will migrate to the proprietary Robinhood Chain. The push into Asia and the establishment of an institutional business are anchored by the $200 million acquisition of crypto exchange Bitstamp, which closed in June 2025. The deal secured Robinhood more than 50 global licenses, providing a regulated path into markets across the EU, UK, and Asia. Bitstamp provides Robinhood with its first institutional-grade infrastructure, including services for deep liquidity, reliable trade execution, institutional lending, and staking. According to GM of Crypto Johann Kerbrat, the long-term vision is for blockchain technology to eventually replace Robinhood's core infrastructure. The chain is intended to be an open ecosystem for developers to build applications beyond Robinhood's own products.
