Imagine one of the most widely used stock trading apps in America, Robinhood, deciding to build its own blockchain from scratch, so people can trade stocks like Apple or Nvidia around the clock, no longer bound by stock market opening and closing hours.

From America’s favorite stock trading app to a blockchain outpacing Ethereum in volume

Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain on July 1, positioned clearly as a blockchain built specifically to support RWA tokenization, the process of bringing real-world assets onto a blockchain. It runs as an Ethereum Layer 2 network on Arbitrum Orbit technology. The response exceeded expectations from week one: the total value of assets on the chain grew from $10 million to $100 million within a single week, and total asset market cap on the chain crossed $420 million within days of launch.

As of July 12, Robinhood Chain’s value reached $878 million, making it the world’s second-largest chain by daily trading volume, overtaking major rivals like Ethereum, the pioneering blockchain of the industry, and Base, the blockchain built by Coinbase, one of the largest crypto trading apps. That’s a fast climb for a chain that had only been live for 11 days.

Analyzing Robinhood Chain’s growth in value

The rapid rise in total assets on the chain comes largely from Morpho, a crypto lending app, which accounts for $90 million of the $100 million total. As for the trading volume that pushed past Ethereum, Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, one of the industry’s largest crypto trading apps, revealed that 99.5% of that volume came from his app alone. The most heavily traded assets were mostly “meme coins,” tokens with no underlying business or real value behind them, traded purely on hype, like CASHCAT, which surged more than 1,100% in a single day.

Why did Robinhood build its own chain specifically for RWA

Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, has placed such weight on RWA that he’s repeated this conviction across multiple media appearances within a short span. It started on July 2, when he told CNBC, a major US financial news outlet, “I believe the future of crypto is in real-world assets. If an asset isn’t tied to underlying utility, it isn’t a productive asset. What’s the benefit of making a million different meme coins?” He added, “Everything that is running on traditional rails will eventually become on-chain tokenized.”

Those comments were picked up widely by crypto and financial media, including CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, and Bloomingbit. Just a few days later, on July 8, he reiterated the same conviction in a post on X: “While we’re building Robinhood chain to be the best chain for RWA… it works great for memes too.” His comments reflect a view that assets with real value behind them, like stocks, bonds, or real estate, represent the long-term direction of the crypto industry.

Shifting strategy from service provider to owning the infrastructure itself

Another reason, as analyzed by crypto industry outlet ChainCatcher, comes down to control over the business. Previously, Robinhood directed users to trade through other companies’ blockchains, making itself just an access channel. Having its own chain lets Robinhood control the entire trading process, settlement, collateral, and yield across its various assets, shifting its position from a service provider to a direct owner of financial infrastructure.

These reasons line up with what’s happening across the industry right now, as major financial institutions like BlackRock increasingly move into tokenization. The total RWA market currently stands at roughly $63.9 billion, with Citigroup projecting it could grow to $5.5 trillion by 2030.

Several major global chains are turning their attention toward RWA around the same period, a direction SIX Network has recognized and has been building RWA tokenization infrastructure across the SEA region for several years as well.

On the other hand, Robinhood already has an existing user base of over 28 million people using its app, giving it instant access to tokenized stocks without needing to download a new app, an advantage no other chain starts with. Chainlink, the system that feeds real-world asset prices into the blockchain, was integrated from day one, infrastructure that’s necessary for making tokenized stocks credible.

The coming weeks will be the real test of how much tokenized stock trading volume can replace the meme coin activity driving the numbers today.