Less than 1% of transactions analysed on Robinhood Chain were routed through a smart contract clearly connected to Robinhood Wallet users, according to Lorenzo Valente, research director for digital assets at ARK Invest.
Valente estimates that Robinhood-linked activity could account for about 5% of the total once unidentified contracts are included. However, he described that figure as generous, with much of the network’s identifiable activity coming through external services including GMGN and OKX.
The analysis suggests Robinhood Chain is currently being used mainly by established on-chain traders rather than large numbers of new cryptocurrency users entering through Robinhood.
Valente examined the smart contracts that generated transactions on the network to distinguish activity linked directly to Robinhood products from trades conducted through outside wallets, trading terminals and applications.
Robinhood Wallet routes swaps through the 0x Settler contract, making it the clearest identifiable path for activity from the company’s wallet users. Transactions involving that contract represented less than 1% of the activity included in Valente’s review.
The possible Robinhood-linked share rises to about 5% when unidentified contracts are taken into account. Valente said some of that unidentified activity could nevertheless have originated from external trading services, meaning the estimate should not be treated as definitive.
External platforms account for most identifiable activity
Most of the identifiable transaction volume outside the 0x Settler route came through GMGN and OKX.
GMGN is a trading terminal used by traders seeking newly launched tokens and other speculative assets across several blockchains. OKX provides a Web3 wallet and decentralised exchange tools that can connect to Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks.
Valente said transaction patterns on Robinhood Chain appeared similar to the behaviour of users of those same services on other networks. He described the network as attracting the “same degens” to a new blockchain, rather than clearly demonstrating that Robinhood had brought a distinct new group of users into on-chain markets.
His conclusions are based on contract data, rather than customer figures supplied by Robinhood. Public blockchain records also make it difficult to identify the original source of every transaction because wallets can interact through aggregators, custom contracts and other routing mechanisms.
The findings relate to where transactions originated, not to the number of individual people using the wallets involved. A single address could belong to one user, a trading bot, an application or a service processing transactions for multiple customers.
Robinhood Chain is a permissionless Ethereum Layer 2 built using Arbitrum technology. EVM-compatible wallets and applications can connect to it without users holding a Robinhood brokerage account, while developers can deploy contracts without limiting access to Robinhood customers.
As a result, the network’s overall transaction count, fees and decentralised exchange volume cannot automatically be treated as activity generated by Robinhood customers. A trade carried out through GMGN or OKX still appears on Robinhood Chain even if the trader has never used Robinhood Wallet.
That distinction is significant because the network has produced substantial trading and revenue figures since its mainnet launch on 1 July.
Crypto.news previously reported that three leading applications generated about 93% of measured application revenue during one 24-hour period. GMGN led the snapshot with approximately $1.11m, followed by the Pons token-launch platform with about $1.03m and Uniswap with roughly $327,707.
The concentration suggested that a small number of crypto-native services were responsible for much of Robinhood Chain’s early fee activity.
On 2 September, Robinhood Chain generated $4.01m in chain revenue from $4.45m in total fees, according to DeFiLlama data cited in a separate report. Cumulative decentralised exchange volume had also exceeded $47bn in less than two months, with GMGN and Pons accounting for much of the memecoin trading.
Robinhood has paid transaction costs during the network’s first 90 days. The gas subsidy is scheduled to continue until the end of September, allowing traders and applications to execute transactions without paying the usual network fee themselves.
Tokenised stocks remain a smaller market
Robinhood launched the chain partly as infrastructure for tokenised stocks, real-world assets and decentralised finance. Trading has also extended into memecoins and newly issued tokens, which are not central to the brokerage’s stock-token strategy.
Uniswap processed $1bn in cumulative tokenised-stock volume on Robinhood Chain by 21 August. That figure covered swaps involving several stock-linked tokens, rather than assets deposited on the network or trades made through a single product.
The stock tokens are not available to investors in the United States. During its August earnings call, Robinhood said it had offered the products in more than 120 countries, giving eligible overseas customers price exposure to US stocks through blockchain-based instruments.
For American investors, Robinhood Markets remains the direct listed exposure to the company’s blockchain strategy through its Nasdaq-traded HOOD shares. However, transactions completed on-chain through external services should not be treated as equivalent to new US brokerage accounts, cryptocurrency customers or revenue reported in Robinhood’s financial statements.
Robinhood reported 28.4 million funded customers at the end of the second quarter, an increase of 1.9 million, or 7%, from a year earlier. Investment accounts rose by 9% to 29.9 million, while total platform assets reached $369bn, according to the company’s second-quarter results.
Customer growth remains a separate measure
Supporters of Robinhood Chain have identified the company’s existing customer base as a potential route for bringing more people on-chain.
Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine, said in August that access to millions of funded accounts could make Robinhood Chain an important source of new Ethereum users. But Valente’s early contract review has not established that link.
Confirmed Robinhood Wallet routing accounted for only a small proportion of the transactions he examined, while trading terminals used by experienced crypto participants generated most of the activity he could identify.
Robinhood said during its second-quarter earnings call that it served more than 1 million accounts outside the United States. The company also reported quarterly revenue of $1.3bn, up 32% from a year earlier, and said it had added nearly 1 million funded customers during the quarter.
