Robinhood Chain Goes Live With 24/7 Tokenized Stocks, Just Not in the US
Robinhood's own Arbitrum-based Layer 2 went live on mainnet with 24/7 stock tokens tradable across DeFi in 120-plus countries, but off-limits to US users.
Robinhood turned on its own blockchain Wednesday. Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 built with Arbitrum's tech stack, went live on mainnet with Uniswap deploying a dedicated AMM from day one. Riding on it: a new class of Stock Tokens that trade around the clock and can be dropped into lending pools or posted as collateral across DeFi. The catch is who can't touch them. Not the U.S.
The London unveiling
The reveal came from a London livestream titled "The World is Flat," staged at the Old Royal Naval College, where CEO Vlad Tenev and his team pitched what the company called its most ambitious global expansion to date. The new Stock Tokens reach eligible users in more than 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet, with spot trading routed through decentralized exchanges including Uniswap, Lighter and 1inch. They are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited: economic exposure to the underlying shares, no legal or beneficial ownership of them.
From Cannes to Robinhood Chain
This is the second act. At its "To Catch a Token" event in Cannes in June 2025, Robinhood switched on more than 200 stock and ETF tokens for users across the EU and EEA, trading inside the existing app on Arbitrum One under MiFID II. Those are now rebranded "Classic Stock Tokens," and they stay put in the Robinhood Europe app. The new tokens move the whole operation onto Robinhood's own rails.
Perpetual futures via Lighter
A revamped Robinhood Wallet also opens perpetual futures through Lighter, the Ethereum-based DEX that raised $68 million last November at a $1.5 billion valuation, with Robinhood Ventures among its backers. Lighter has committed $11 million of its LIT token to Robinhood users, who earn points that convert into LIT, double when trading through the wallet and single on Lighter's own site. Perps, too, are walled off from a long list of countries, the U.S., UK and Singapore among them.
Agentic Accounts, crypto trading handled by AI, are set to start rolling out in the U.S. soon. It is one of the few things unveiled Wednesday that Americans will actually get to use.
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Disclosure
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