coindesk.com
Robinhood's (HOOD) new blockchain has posted a strong debut, quickly emerging as one of the busiest networks for decentralized trading and reinforcing the broker's strategy to expand tokenized financial products, Wall Street broker Bernstein said in a Monday research report.
Since launching its mainnet on July 1, Robinhood Chain has generated $3.1 billion in decentralized exchange trading volume over the past week, making it a top-five chain by DEX activity, the broker said. More than 65,000 users now hold around $13 million in tokenized stocks and $300 million in stablecoins on the network.
"Strong early adoption highlights the growing convergence of tokenized real world assets with the broader DeFi ecosystem, as industry participants continue to innovate across multiple business models for regulated asset tokenization," wrote analysts led by Gautam Chhugani.
Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain on July 1, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum that's designed for tokenized real-world assets and decentralized finance.
The network underpins the firm's tokenized stock offering, enabling 24/7 trading, self-custody and onchain use cases such as lending and collateral, while supporting integrations with decentralized applications and liquidity providers.
The new blockchain broadens the company's crypto offering by combining tokenized equities, decentralized lending and perpetual futures on an Arbitrum-based Ethereum layer-2 network, the analysts said.
While early trading has been driven by memecoins, the broker expects Robinhood to increasingly focus on tokenized real-world assets, including stocks and commodities, alongside perpetual futures.
The report also highlighted Robinhood's integrations with partners including Uniswap, Morpho, Lighter, Chainlink and BitGo as key to building liquidity and expanding the utility of tokenized assets.
The launch comes as tokenized real-world assets continue to outperform the broader crypto market. The sector has grown to more than $51 billion, up about 50% year to date, while tokenized equities have expanded roughly 170% this year to $1.9 billion, underscoring growing investor interest in regulated asset tokenization, the report added.
Bernstein has an outperform rating on Robinhood stock with a $130 price target. The shares were 0.6% lower in early trading Monday, at $111.35.
Read more: Robinhood rolls out public blockchain as it expands deeper into crypto