Robinhood launches Chain as prediction-market trading surges

Robinhood opened the public mainnet for Robinhood Chain on July 1 in London. The network is an Ethereum layer-2 built on Arbitrum and is designed to host tokenized real-world assets, decentralized finance applications and trading tied to Robinhood’s products.

Tokenized Stocks are available through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, with access varying by jurisdiction. Eligible users can trade tokenized equities 24 hours a day and use them in DeFi use cases such as lending pools and as collateral for trading.

Robinhood introduced Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product that allows eligible U.S. users to lend USDG, the company’s dollar-backed stablecoin, via a self-custody wallet. The product carries an estimated 7% annual percentage yield, uses lending infrastructure from Morpho, and includes insurance arranged through Lloyd’s of London and RELM for cyber and smart-contract losses.

The chain integrates with crypto infrastructure providers including Alchemy, BitGo and Chainlink. Uniswap is deploying a dedicated automated market maker on the network, and Pleiades plans to run a proprietary automated market maker as a trading venue.

Artemis reported about 12.3 billion event contracts traded through June 25. Using a standard take rate of $0.01 per contract, that volume implies roughly $123 million in quarterly revenue before the final days of June. Robinhood reported $134 million in crypto transaction revenue in the first quarter. Robinhood offers event contracts through a partnership with Kalshi, and company executives have cited a $500 million annual revenue run rate for the business. CEO Vlad Tenev has described the company as near the beginning of a prediction-market cycle.

Robinhood is developing its own prediction-market infrastructure through Rothera, a platform linked to Robinhood and Susquehanna. Rothera recorded more than $900 million in volume over a recent one-week period but remains smaller than leading venues such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Whether trade flow continues to route through Kalshi, shifts to Rothera, or uses a mix of venues will affect how much trading revenue the company captures.

On the derivatives side, Robinhood expanded perpetual futures in Europe, adding commodity, ETF and foreign-exchange perpetuals with up to 10x leverage and round-the-clock trading for assets including gold, silver, QQQ, EUR/USD, WTI, Brent crude and EWY. Bitstamp by Robinhood launched multi-asset perpetual futures with unified collateral management, U.S. dollar settlement, reference prices from Kaiko Benchmark Indices and matching technology provided by Nasdaq. Bitstamp by Robinhood operates as a MiFID II-authorized multilateral trading facility in Europe and offers institutional access to FX, equity indices, commodities and crypto from a single capital pool.

Robinhood expanded Agentic Accounts for eligible U.S. users, allowing customers to connect AI models to the firm’s trading infrastructure through its Trading MCP. Users set capital allocations and safety limits. Agentic trading, already available for equities and options, was extended to crypto.

Regulatory and business risks remain. Prediction markets face legal uncertainty if contracts broaden beyond narrowly defined financial and sports outcomes. Tokenized securities and stablecoin lending involve legal and compliance requirements that differ by jurisdiction. Custody, insurance and smart-contract safeguards will be tested as usage scales. Volumes tied to major events such as the World Cup can be large and may decline after the events end.

Robinhood also said it plans to launch crypto trading in the U.K., expand services in Canada following its acquisition of WonderFi, and has received a capital markets services license in Singapore.