Why did Robinhood choose Arbitrum instead of an independent Layer-1? Tokenized stock count surpasses 2,000

【Block Rhythm】Robinhood’s crypto business team recently revealed an interesting choice — instead of building an independent Layer-1 public chain, they decided to develop their own Ethereum Layer-2 solution on Arbitrum. The team explained that while this decision might seem a bit unconventional, the logic is quite clear: directly inherit Ethereum’s security guarantees and decentralization features, plus the liquidity already present in the EVM ecosystem. This approach saves a lot of trouble and allows full focus on the core business — tokenization of stocks.

Currently, Robinhood’s own L2 is still in private testnet, but the tokenized stocks deployment has already begun and is running on Arbitrum One. When the new chain officially launches, these assets and liquidity can be seamlessly migrated, with almost zero migration costs.

From a numerical perspective, this business is growing quite rapidly. Initially, there were only about 200 tokenized stocks, but now it has expanded to over 2,000, more than ten times the original number. This growth curve indicates increasing market acceptance of such products, and Robinhood’s strategic layout in this area is indeed quite interesting.