Robinhood’s move isn’t a speculative experiment anymore - it’s the blueprint for its entire business. Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s VP of Crypto, told Bankless that the ‘Robinhood Chain’, built as an Arbitrum Orbit chain, is now the ledger for the company’s core brokerage logic.
According to Kerbrat, the architecture allows Robinhood to write smart contracts in languages like Rust for the performance needed to handle millions of transactions at near-zero cost. Its tokenized stocks, which are one-to-one backed assets carrying dividend and governance rights, are now freely transferable across the Ethereum ecosystem. Institutional investors can bridge them onto Robinhood Chain, then move them to venues like Uniswap or Lighter, creating a 24/7 marketplace for U.S. equities.
“Legacy transfers take days and often lose cost-basis data. Kerbrat argues that putting these positions on-chain makes the process instant and transparent. If the brokerage fails, the customer’s on-chain position remains secure and independent.”
- Johann Kerbrat, Bankless
On The Bitcoin Podcast, hosts Demetri and Jesse argued that similar moves by financial giants represent the old guard co-opting crypto rails, not revolutionizing them. They cited a consortium including BlackRock, Google, Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa backing ‘Open Standard USD’ as a centralized stablecoin masquerading as an open standard.
Bankless co-hosts David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams saw Robinhood’s Layer 2 differently - as a vertical integration play designed to capture sequencer fees and turn a brokerage into a destination. They noted the strategy signals a shift in the fintech hierarchy, where success isn’t defined by how many tokens you list, but by how much infrastructure you own.
The metrics show traction. Kerbrat said within 24 hours of launch, the chain processed over one million transactions. Robinhood is now incentivizing developers to build on its distribution, betting its 27 million users are the ultimate liquidity for new DeFi primitives.
“Kerbrat expects traditional clearing and settlement systems to eventually vanish. Blockchains provide default fractionalization and proof of history that legacy databases can’t match. By moving business logic on-chain, the firm reduces overhead and bypasses traditional financial gatekeepers.”
- Johann Kerbrat, Bankless
Across the shows, a consensus emerged: the financial rails are being rebuilt on-chain, whether by insurgents like Robinhood or by incumbent consortiums. The dispute is over who controls them.
