What Robinhood really wants to do is an on-chain Nasdaq.

Author: very big very big orange; Source: X, @0xVeryBigOrange

I think the whole market is underestimating Robinhood’s move to a public chain.

Many people’s first reaction to the news is: HOOD released an L2.

But I believe what they truly want to do isn’t a public chain in the first place—it’s an Onchain Nasdaq.

This is what’s really worth paying attention to.

Over the past few decades, the underlying infrastructure of U.S. stock trading hasn’t changed much. Placing an order by the user → broker → exchange → clearing institution → T+1 settlement.

What Robinhood wants to change is this underlying architecture.

On July 1, Robinhood Chain officially launched its mainnet—this is an Ethereum Layer2 built using the Arbitrum Orbit technology stack, specifically designed for tokenizing traditional securities assets like stocks and ETFs.

In the future, a share of Apple, a share of NVIDIA, a share of Tesla—essentially, they can all become a Token on-chain. They can be traded nonstop, 7×24, and are open to 120+ countries and regions (currently, U.S. users are not included).

For the first time, stocks truly become assets that are freely composable.

They can not only be bought and sold, but also:

• 24×7 trading, around the clock

• Used for collateralized lending/borrowing (Robinhood has already launched an on-chain lending product with an annualized rate of about 7%)

• Participate in DeFi

• Provide liquidity (LP)

• Have AI agents automatically manage and configure assets

Stocks are no longer just stocks—they become on-chain financial “LEGO.”

However, there’s a detail worth noting here: currently, these Stock Tokens are legally closer to a debt instrument that tracks stock price performance, rather than direct equity itself; holders do not enjoy shareholder rights. That’s also why Robinhood chooses to use HOOD’s stock price to carry the market’s imagination for this chain, instead of issuing a native token for the chain—what you’re buying is essentially “whether Robinhood can pull this off,” not the chain’s native token itself.

Many people like to compare Coinbase and Robinhood side by side. But I think the two companies have already taken two completely different paths.

What Coinbase wants to do is: bring the internet onto the blockchain. Base, USDC, DeFi, payments, Social… building an open on-chain economy.

What Robinhood wants to do is: bring Wall Street onto the blockchain. Stocks, ETFs, RWA, on-chain securities, on-chain settlement.

In the future, the real competition won’t be who has lower fees—it’ll be who can become a platform for issuing and circulating global financial assets.

There’s one more thing I think many people in the market haven’t realized.

Robinhood Chain is not a new Layer1.

It chooses Ethereum + Arbitrum Orbit (Gas is still settled with ETH—this differs from most Orbit chains that choose a custom Gas token).

So what does that imply?

It’s not competing with Ethereum—it’s adding a large financial application to the Ethereum ecosystem.

In recent years, we’ve already seen more and more traditional financial assets choosing to deploy within the Ethereum ecosystem:

• Stablecoins

• RWA

• On-chain funds

• Tokenized stocks

If, in the future, more and more financial institutions follow this route, then ETH’s positioning could become increasingly similar to TCP/IP in the internet era.

People don’t talk about it often, but more and more financial assets will run on top of it.

So, I’m increasingly convinced of one thing: over the next decade, the biggest narrative may not necessarily be Meme, and it may not be only DeFi.

What’s truly worth watching might be: Wall Street Onchain.

Robinhood and Coinbase are just two different entry points. One is responsible for bringing the internet onto the chain. The other is responsible for bringing Wall Street onto the chain.

If this trend holds, then the next real competition in crypto won’t be about who has more Memes—it will be about who can carry global financial assets.

Finally, a personal judgment from me.

If in the future Robinhood really can gradually migrate tens of millions of broker users—and securities assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars or even larger—onto the chain, then its competitors may no longer be just other internet brokers, but the traditional securities trading and clearing systems themselves.

By then, Robinhood’s valuation logic may also need to be redefined—it wouldn’t be only a brokerage, but more like a global financial infrastructure company.

And for ETH, I believe its real value won’t be just Gas fees, but will gradually become the underlying settlement layer for global financial assets.

Of course, there’s also a reminder: the current status of Stock Token holders’ rights, regulatory classification (the U.S. SEC has already issued compliance warnings about similar structures), and whether it will expand to users within the United States are all still at an early stage—worth ongoing observation, not simple linear extrapolation.

If this trend ultimately materializes, looking back at Robinhood Chain today, you may find that it isn’t just another public chain—it could be an important starting point for traditional finance to move fully onto the blockchain.