Robinhood's Layer 2 testnet sees four million transactions in first week, CEO Vlad Tenev says

Robinhood's public testnet for its own blockchain has accumulated four million transactions in its first week, according to CEO Vlad Tenev.

"Developers are already building on our L2, designed for tokenized real-world assets and onchain financial services," Tenev said in an X post on Wednesday. "The next chapter of finance runs onchain."

The U.S. financial trading giant launched the testnet for Robinhood Chain last Tuesday as an Ethereum Layer 2 built on Arbitrum. 

The chain, which underwent six months of private testing before the public testnet launch, is designed as a permissionless blockchain platform for high-throughput financial applications, with native support for tokenized equities, ETFs, and other real-world assets. Robinhood has already integrated key infrastructure partners, including Alchemy, LayerZero, and Chainlink.

The testnet's rapid accumulation of transactions demonstrates strong early developer interest in the network, which likely strengthens Robinhood's long-term focus on crypto and tokenization despite the current market pullback. Robinhood saw its crypto transaction revenue fall 38% year-over-year to $221 million during the fourth quarter of last year.

Robinhood announced last month that it plans to expand its tokenized stock offering to include round-the-clock trading, near-real-time settlement, and self-custody. Tenev previously compared tokenization to a freight train, saying that it "can't be stopped" and will eventually eat the entire financial system.

Robinhood Chain's mainnet launch is expected later this year, though no exact date has been announced.