Robinhood's crypto strategy has recently made new progress. Instead of choosing to launch its own Layer-1 blockchain independently, the company decided to build an Ethereum Layer-2 network based on Arbitrum. Johann Kerbrat, the person in charge, explained the logic behind this choice — leveraging Ethereum's security and decentralization foundation directly, while also being able to reuse the liquidity from the existing EVM ecosystem. This way, they can focus their main efforts on core businesses like stock tokenization.

Currently, Robinhood's self-developed L2 is still in private testing, but tokenized stocks have already been deployed on the Arbitrum One network for testing. When the new chain officially launches, assets and liquidity can be migrated seamlessly without worrying about ecosystem fragmentation.

Numerically, Robinhood's tokenized stock product is growing rapidly. From around 200 initially, it has expanded to over 2,000, covering a quite broad range. This growth rate reflects the increasing market demand for stock tokenization and also indicates that Robinhood's bet on this path is correct. Choosing mature Layer-2 infrastructure like Arbitrum ensures network stability without reinventing the wheel, and focusing on product innovation is a smarter approach.