Why the trading app is building it own L2 while Ethereum founder cools on them
Robinhood’s (HOOD) testnet has logged 4 million transactions in its first week that its testnet chain is dwell, CEO of the funding platform Vlad Tenev mentioned on X on Thursday.
The Robinhood Chain, which focuses on tokenization and buying and selling, comes at a time the place centralized exchanges wish to constructing their very own blockchain infrastructure even because the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future.
“Builders are already constructing on our L2, designed for tokenized actual world belongings and onchain monetary companies,” Tenev wrote.
Testnets are risk-free environments for builders to check code and experimental options forward of its mainnet going dwell. The 2 levels of a community’s improvement could possibly be in comparison with a flight simulator and a industrial flight.
The Robinhood Chain’s testnet has arrived towards the backdrop of a bigger reckoning within the Ethereum world.
Earlier this month, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the protocol’s long-held layer-2 (L2) rollup-centric roadmap “now not is sensible,” arguing that many rollups have fallen in need of full decentralization and that Ethereum’s base layer is scaling sooner than anticipated.
That philosophical shift has fueled chatter within the Ethereum group about what scaling and significant decentralization could seem like in 2026. However whereas some within the developer group push for brand spanking new frameworks, Tenev and different centralized gamers seem like doubling down on proprietary chains and tokenized markets as a strategy to seize customers and liquidity.
The distinction underscores a rising divide in crypto’s path. Whereas Ethereum’s core architects reassess how scaling ought to evolve on the bottom layer, main buying and selling platforms wish to management extra of the stack themselves. For exchanges, proudly owning the infrastructure may imply tighter person seize, new income streams and higher affect over how tokenized markets take form.
Learn extra: Robinhood begins testing its personal blockchain as crypto and tokenization push deepens
