Robinhood launches Robinhood Chain as prediction markets surge

Robinhood opened the public mainnet for Robinhood Chain on July 1 at an event in London and announced a package of crypto and trading products alongside plans for wider market expansion. The company introduced tokenized stock trading through Robinhood Wallet and a decentralized lending product for USDG, its dollar-backed stablecoin.

Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum layer-2 network built on Arbitrum. The company said the network will host tokenized real-world assets, decentralized finance applications and onchain trading tied to Robinhood’s products. Integrations with infrastructure providers include Alchemy, BitGo and Chainlink, and decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and Pleiades are deploying automated market makers on the chain.

Stock Tokens are available through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, with access rules that vary by jurisdiction. Eligible users can trade tokenized equities 24 hours a day and use those tokens in decentralized finance applications, including lending pools and as collateral for other trades.

Robinhood introduced Robinhood Earn, a decentralized lending product that lets eligible U.S. users lend USDG from a self-custody wallet. The product targets an estimated 7% annual percentage yield and uses lending infrastructure provided by Morpho. Insurance coverage for losses tied to cyber incidents or smart-contract exploits has been procured through Lloyd’s of London and RELM.

The product launches came as prediction-market activity on Robinhood and partner venues grew rapidly. Analytics cited roughly 12.3 billion event contracts traded through June 25; at a typical take rate of $0.01 per contract, that volume would imply about $123 million in quarterly revenue before the final days of June. By comparison, Robinhood’s first-quarter crypto transaction revenue was $134 million.

Robinhood offers event contracts through a partnership with Kalshi and is developing a prediction-market platform called Rothera with trading firm Susquehanna. Company executives reported Rothera produced more than $900 million in volume over a recent one-week period. CEO Vlad Tenev described the company as near the beginning of a prediction-market cycle and executives have referenced a potential $500 million annual revenue run rate for the business.

Rothera remains smaller than established prediction-market platforms and long-term monetization has not been set. Volumes have been boosted by sports markets, including World Cup-related activity. Regulatory questions around prediction markets remain unsettled, particularly if contract offerings expand beyond narrow financial and sports outcomes.

Robinhood expanded its derivatives and trading features as well. The brokerage rolled out perpetual futures for commodities, ETFs and foreign exchange to eligible European users, adding contracts on gold, silver, QQQ, EUR/USD, WTI and Brent crude with up to 10x leverage and 24/7 trading. Bitstamp by Robinhood launched multi-asset perpetual futures for institutional clients, operating as a MiFID II-authorized multilateral trading facility and using Nasdaq-powered matching technology with reference prices from Kaiko Benchmark Indices.

The company extended Agentic Accounts to crypto trading for eligible U.S. users, enabling customers to connect AI models to Robinhood’s trading infrastructure via its Trading MCP with user-set capital limits and safety controls. Robinhood previously made agentic trading available for equities and options.

Robinhood said it plans to expand crypto trading to the U.K., make services available in Canada after acquiring WonderFi, and has received a capital markets services license in Singapore.