Robinhood’s new blockchain has drawn more than $431m (£335m) in locked assets and close to $400m in stablecoins in just three weeks – yet over four-fifths of its trading is being driven by highly speculative memecoins rather than the real-world financial products it was built to support.
The Ethereum Layer 2 network, launched on 1 July and branded Robinhood Chain, has “rapidly become one of the busiest blockchains”, according to a research primer by crypto trading firm FalconX, published on Monday.
Citing data provider Artemis, FalconX said the network is now processing around six million transactions a day and drawing more than 250,000 daily active users – activity that on some measures has already overtaken Coinbase’s Base network. Cumulative trading volumes on decentralised exchanges (DEXs) running on Robinhood Chain have climbed towards $9bn.
Speculative tokens dominate early activity
Despite Robinhood positioning the chain as infrastructure for tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) and decentralised financial services, FalconX said that trading has so far been driven by riskier assets.
Quoting analysis from Entropy Advisors, the report found that more than 80% of cumulative DEX volume on Robinhood Chain has come from memecoin trading, leaving tokenised financial instruments and other RWAs at an early stage of adoption.
The findings underscore a tension at the heart of Robinhood’s crypto strategy: a network marketed as a gateway to regulated, onchain financial products has, at least initially, been captured by the same speculative trading culture that fuelled earlier crypto booms.
Revenue split reignites Ethereum economics debate
Robinhood Chain is built using the Arbitrum technology stack as an Ethereum Layer 2, settling transactions back to Ethereum while paying 10% of its net chain revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem under a licensing deal.
FalconX said that, in practice, Ethereum’s base layer has captured only about 0.6% of the fees generated on the chain, adding fresh detail to a live debate over how much value Layer 2 networks pass back to Ethereum.
Earlier analysis, cited by crypto.news, concluded that Robinhood Chain has retained the bulk of its revenue, with Arbitrum receiving its contracted share and Ethereum collecting a comparatively small amount through settlement and data-availability fees.
Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin has previously argued that keeping Layer 1 fees low is a deliberate choice to support long-term ecosystem growth, by making it cheaper for new applications and users to build on and use Ethereum.
Tokenised stocks launch but lag rivals
FalconX argued that Robinhood Chain’s value proposition lies less in immediate fee generation and more in its potential to move a large retail audience into onchain financial products.
Senior crypto market strategist Martin Gaspar wrote that Robinhood’s reported customer base of nearly 28 million users could, over time, become a significant source of blockchain activity if those customers start using tokenised products and decentralised finance (DeFi).
Supporting that ambition, Robinhood has introduced transferable Stock Tokens as ERC‐20 assets. These represent tokenised debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited and are backed one‐for‐one by underlying shares held with a US custodian. Unlike the firm’s earlier stock tokens, this new version can be sent onchain and integrated with decentralised applications.
However, data from RWA.xyz cited in the report suggests that adoption is still modest. Robinhood’s tokenised stocks stand at around $14m, compared with about $851m for competitor Ondo and roughly $481m for xStocks, both of which entered the market earlier.
Gaspar wrote that Robinhood’s established retail base could help it close some of that gap as the network develops.
Lending and stablecoins emerge as key pillars
Away from tokenised equities, lending has quickly become one of the main drivers of capital on Robinhood Chain.
FalconX said Robinhood Earn allows customers to lend stablecoin USDG through Morpho-powered vaults supported by Steakhouse, Ethena, Spark and Maple. A key differentiator from many existing DeFi lending platforms is insurance arranged through Lloyd’s of London and RELM, which covers losses arising from cyber incidents or smart contract exploits. According to FalconX, comparable Morpho vaults offered by Coinbase do not include similar insurance.
At the same time, the report questioned the sustainability of the yields being advertised. While Robinhood Earn is currently displaying an estimated annual percentage yield (APY) of around 7%, FalconX noted that Steakhouse’s USDG vault was generating approximately 1.9% APY as of 20 July.
Analysts quoted in the report said a Merkl rewards campaign could continue subsidising the gap until deposits in the vaults approach around $2bn.
Morpho itself has become one of the largest protocols on Robinhood Chain within weeks of launch. FalconX said Morpho Markets on the network had reached a market size of roughly $280m as of 19 July, while Morpho vaults held about $194m in total value locked. Maple’s syrupUSDG product, Ethena’s USDe integration and Uniswap’s trading infrastructure have also been important contributors to early ecosystem activity.
Stablecoins have grown alongside these lending products. FalconX reported that stablecoin market capitalisation on Robinhood Chain has reached nearly $396m, led by Paxos‐issued USDG and Ethena’s USDe. USDG is used as the lending asset within Robinhood Earn, while USDe operates as yield‐bearing collateral inside Morpho vaults.
New apps arrive but memecoins still in control
Beyond lending and tokenised assets, a range of other applications is beginning to appear on the network. FalconX highlighted Virtuals, which has deployed thousands of AI agents on Robinhood Chain, as well as perpetuals trading platform Lighter, token launchpads Noxa and Flap, and decentralised exchange Arcus.
Even so, the report said that much of the network’s trading volume remains concentrated in speculative tokens rather than financial products directly linked to real‐world assets.
Gaspar concluded that Robinhood Chain is “positioned to move millions of existing Robinhood users onchain” while serving as a testbed for practical applications of tokenised assets and DeFi.
According to the report, lending products backed by Robinhood’s app integration, incentive schemes and insurance cover could continue to attract deposits in the near term. Over the longer run, the growth of tokenised stocks – and how extensively they are used across decentralised applications – is expected to be one of the key indicators of whether Robinhood’s blockchain experiment can move beyond memecoins and towards mainstream finance.
