Quick Insights

  • More than $70 million in ETH was bridged to Robinhood Chain in its first week on mainnet, with DefiLlama reporting a total value locked of 46,748 ETH, worth around $83 million at Thursday's prices, and a single day's inflows of 31,855 ETH on Thursday alone.
  • Daily active users reached 194,000 in the chain's opening week while daily revenue hit $39,000, equivalent to a $14 million annualised run rate, according to Token Terminal data.
  • Because Robinhood Chain uses ETH as its native gas token on an Arbitrum-based L2 and burns ETH on L1 for data storage, analysts say it creates direct, recurring demand for Ethereum at a time when ETH remains 64% below its August 2025 peak.

Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum Layer 2 that the brokerage launched on July 1, has attracted more than $70 million in bridged ETH in its first week of operation, according to Token Terminal data. The chain is built on Arbitrum's Orbit stack, uses ETH as its native gas token, and runs at 100-millisecond block times, making it the first major retail brokerage to operate its own Ethereum settlement infrastructure.

DefiLlama reports a total value locked of 46,748 ETH as of Thursday, worth around $83 million at current prices. Thursday's inflows alone totalled 31,855 ETH, roughly $55 million, as the bridge activity accelerated through the week. Token Terminal noted that the chain's daily active user count reached 194,000 within the opening week, with daily revenue growing to $39,000, an annualised run rate of around $14 million for a seven-day-old network. The chain has processed roughly 4 million transactions in its first week, with Uniswap, 1inch and Arcus, a DEX built by the dYdX team, live from day one alongside Chainlink as the official oracle infrastructure.

Robinhood Chose ETH at a Moment When the Asset Remains Under Significant Pressure

The timing matters. ETH ticked up to $1,775 on Friday but remains at multi-year lows, down 64% from its August 2025 peak. Robinhood's decision to build on Ethereum and use ETH as the gas token rather than launching a native chain token represents a meaningful vote of confidence in Ethereum's infrastructure at a moment when the asset is deeply out of favour with price-focused traders.

"For Ethereum, the most direct benefit is that Robinhood Chain uses ETH for gas. As bridged assets, wallet addresses, and on-chain transactions grow, new demand for ETH is generated. However, the deeper significance lies not just in how much gas is consumed, but in Robinhood's choice to build its own on-chain financial ecosystem within the Ethereum network. This further solidifies Ethereum mainnet's position as the ultimate settlement layer and liquidity foundation for tokenized assets."

Tim Sun, Senior Researcher, HashKey Group

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams made the same structural point more directly on Friday, noting that on Robinhood Chain ETH is "the base pair for trading, the highest volume asset, and the gas token to pay for blockspace," while also burning ETH on L1 to pay data storage fees. Each of those functions creates demand at a different point in the chain's operation, compounding over time as activity grows.

The Distribution Advantage No Other L2 Has Replicated

What separates Robinhood Chain from the many other Arbitrum Orbit deployments is not the technology, which is standard, but the distribution channel behind it. Robinhood has nearly 28 million funded brokerage accounts, and its wallet now supports the chain natively, putting the L2 one tap away from a user base that already trusts the brand with their money. The testnet logged 4 million transactions and 600,000 deployed contracts in its first week in February. The mainnet has now surpassed that transaction volume on a weekly basis.

Robinhood Chain: First Week by the Numbers
  • ETH bridged in week one: more than $70M (Token Terminal)
  • Total value locked as of July 10: 46,748 ETH (~$83M) via DefiLlama
  • Thursday inflows alone: 31,855 ETH (~$55M)
  • Daily active users: 194,000
  • Daily revenue: $39,000 (~$14M annualised run rate)
  • First-week transactions: approximately 4 million
  • Stock tokens available at launch: 95
  • Countries with access to tokenized stocks: 120+

A Structural Positive for ETH, With the Usual Early-Stage Caveats

Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, described the first-week activity as "strongly bullish," saying the early volume "validates the L2 flywheel" and creates "a meaningful new demand sink" for ETH. He noted that every transaction on a high-velocity Arbitrum L2 using ETH as gas creates direct, recurring demand while locking capital and onboarding new users to Ethereum's broader ecosystem.

The standard caveats apply. Early L2 launches consistently see inflated metrics in the first week as speculators bridge capital to explore incentives before activity normalises. Robinhood Chain is run by a single sequencer for now, which is normal for a young network but means the chain's liveness currently depends entirely on Robinhood's infrastructure. Whether the 194,000 daily active users and 31,855 ETH in daily inflows represent the beginning of sustained activity or a launch spike that fades is the question that the next month of data will answer. Ethereum bulls meanwhile point to the Glamsterdam upgrade expected before year-end, which is designed to increase L1 capacity and reduce costs further for L2s building on top.

For more context on how tokenized assets and settlement infrastructure are developing across the Ethereum ecosystem, see our guide to DTCC tokenisation and our crypto ETFs guide, which covers how institutional capital is flowing into the broader digital asset ecosystem.

Disclaimer: Nakamoto Daily provides information for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing published here constitutes financial, investment, or trading advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decisions.