Original author: TechFlow
As the US dollar stablecoin gradually attracts market attention, companies inside and outside the cryptocurrency circle have begun to regard US stocks as their next target.
At the end of May, the US cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced that it would provide tokenized popular US stocks to non-US customers; on June 18, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal revealed that the company was seeking SEC approval to launch its "tokenized stock" service.
The tokenization of U.S. stocks has gradually become an explicit business.
Now, this business may have welcomed a new player - Robinhood, a well-known American Internet brokerage, "retail investor Boxer", and a key force in the movement to bring down Wall Street.
Previously, two people familiar with Robinhood told Bloomberg that they are developing a blockchain-based platform that allows retail investors in Europe to trade U.S. stocks.
According to people familiar with the matter, the technology selected for this platform may be Arbitrum or Solana, and the specific partner is still being selected and the agreement has not yet been finalized.
This news can be interpreted in at least two ways.
First, Robinhood directly integrated Arbitrum L2 into this new platform that allows European users to trade US stocks as the base layer of its blockchain transactions;
Second, and more likely, Robinhood plans to leverage Arbitrum’s Arbitrum Chains feature to develop its own dedicated L2 chain based on Arbitrum’s technology stack (Rollup protocol, EVM compatibility, etc.).
Regardless of the final outcome, market sentiment has been driven.
This means that Robinhood may develop its own dedicated L2 for the tokenization of U.S. stocks, which will be more conducive to on-chain settlement and dedicated management of the business.
At the EthCC to be held in Cannes, France on the 30th, Robinhood will also make an important announcement at 17:00 local time (23:00 Beijing time), which has led to speculation that it is related to its L2 and US stock tokenization business.
At the same time, AJ Warner, chief strategy officer of Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, will also attend the meeting, which also gives everyone more room for imagination for simultaneous official announcements.
ARB, whose price has been somewhat dull recently, saw its 24-hour increase exceed 20% at one point, ranking at the top of the cryptocurrency increase list.
What is more suggestive is that Roobinhood Europe’s X account replied “Stay tuned” under a netizen’s meeting agenda discussion thread. Combined with Bloomberg’s report on providing U.S. stock trading to Europe, the possibility of an official announcement of this feature has become higher.
Everything has a trace
Robinhood’s idea of tokenizing U.S. stocks is not a sudden whim.
In January this year, the company’s CEO Vlad Tenev criticized the current US regulations, believing that the United States has not yet provided a clear framework and rules for the registration of security tokens, hindering the promotion of tokenized products.
In a podcast in March, Tenev put it bluntly: “It’s very difficult to invest in an American company if you’re overseas right now.”
This also hits the pain point of most investors who pay attention to the trends of U.S. stocks but are not physically in the United States. They urgently need a smoother way to trade U.S. stocks.
Tenev also said at the time that he was considering tokenizing securities, noting that this would be part of a broader push to integrate digital assets into the financial system.
Now, there are traces of paving the way.
Currently, Robinhood's customers in the European Union can only trade cryptocurrencies, but the company obtained a brokerage license in Lithuania last month, allowing it to provide investment services such as stock trading in the European Union.
In addition, Robinhood also signed an agreement to acquire cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp in June last year. After the transaction is completed, Robinhood will be able to use Bitstamp’s MiFID Multilateral Trading Facility (MiFID) license to provide crypto-related derivatives.
Now that the license has been obtained and the regulations have been complied with, it is time to consider which chain to choose at the implementation level.
Why Arbitrum, maybe?
From a technical perspective, Arbitrum is a fully EVM-compatible L2 solution, which means Robinhood can seamlessly migrate its existing Ethereum smart contracts and development tools without major changes to its technology stack.
EVM compatibility can be said to be the key to the rapid on-chain launch of large fintech companies such as Robinhood. If you can leverage Ethereum’s extensive developer community and existing infrastructure, who would put it aside?
Going further, Arbitrum's Optimistic Rollup technology also strikes a balance between transaction confirmation time and cost; in comparison, ZK Rollup has higher costs and relatively slower transaction confirmation times; Robinhood, as a platform that needs to handle large-scale user transactions, is more likely to give priority to Arbitrum's mature technology and lower development threshold.
On the other hand, from a business perspective, this choice is also avoiding Coinbase.
Base is L2 launched by Coinbase. It also uses the OP technology stack, but obviously because Roobinhood competes with Coinbase in its main business, it is unlikely to run the US stock tokenization business directly on Base.
Arbitrum offers the option of custom L2 chains (Arbitrum Chains), which allows Robinhood to differentiate itself from Base.
One piece of information you may have overlooked is that Robinhood and Arbitrum actually have experience in cooperation.
As early as ETHDenver in 2024, Robinhood officially announced its cooperation with Arbitrum to simplify the process for users to access Arbitrum through Robinhood Wallet.
This shows that the two parties already have a foundation for technological integration and strategic alliance, and Robinhood may choose to continue this cooperation and use Arbitrum's existing technical support and brand effect to further expand its business.
Imitates Base, but is different from Base
Although the news that Robinhood used Arbitrum to build its own L2 has not been officially confirmed, it has already aroused widespread discussion in the crypto community.
The most pointed voice among them is that this gameplay is a simple imitation of Base.
Base was launched by Coinbase and adopts an open strategy, inviting external developers to build DApps to expand the ecosystem and attract users and assets. Base's success is partly due to this open ecosystem (for example, projects such as Aerodrome and Uniswap have migrated or built on it).
And if Robinhood also builds an L2 based on Arbitrum, opens it to external developers to expand the ecosystem, and runs more use cases for real assets on the chain, although the technology stack is different, this is highly similar to Base's business strategy.
In terms of visual perception, the key factor that easily creates this "imitation" impression is lag.
Don’t forget that Coinbase launched Base in late 2023, while Robinhood has only now announced its Arbitrum L2 plans. This time difference makes Robinhood’s actions look like a “me too” reaction to Base’s success rather than an original strategy.
In the traditional business field, financial technology companies usually tend to copy proven models, which is indeed a safer strategy; but imitating Base means that Robinhood will compete directly with Coinbase, and Coinbase has established a first-mover advantage through Base. If Robinhood wants to overtake, it needs to invest more resources and effort.
Well-known data platform Token Terminal also pointed out a "clear path" for Roobinhood, the core of which is to magnify its advantages as an Internet brokerage and take a "closed ecosystem" route that is opposite to Base:
Do not invite external application developers to join its L2, migrate all of Robinhood's existing financial products (such as trading or investment tools), assets, and users to the chain, and allow users to operate directly on the chain instead of relying on traditional centralized systems.
This idea is more Crypto Native, combining Robinhood's existing customer base with pure chain gameplay, but a more radical approach also means greater resistance, and Robinhood may not necessarily follow this path.
If we look beyond Robinhood and observe the entire Ethereum ecosystem, some people believe that this will make the split of Ethereum L2 even more serious.
Ethereum L1 has lost a lot of initiative in the current L2 ecosystem. Performance is secondary. What is more important is the complete marginalization and pipelineization. It is easy to build a dedicated L2, but it is difficult to revive Ethereum.
What choice will Robinhood make in the end? We may get the answer after today's ETHcc.
