Robinhood launches Arbitrum-powered layer-2 network for tokenized stocks

Robinhood just flipped the switch on its own Ethereum layer-2 network, bringing the brokerage's massive retail reach directly onto the blockchain. Built using Arbitrum technology, the new mainnet went live Wednesday to handle everything from crypto swaps to tokenized versions of traditional stocks. It's a calculated move to cut settlement times and fees that usually plague standard stock trading. By shifting these transactions to an AI-native layer-2, the company wants to prove that decentralized rails can handle the high-velocity demands of a public market. Users won't just be buying digital coins; they'll be interacting with a hybrid system where Wall Street assets live alongside ETH. Robinhood is betting that its 24 million customers care more about speed and low costs than the technical nuances of sequencers or rollups. The big question is whether legacy regulators will look at tokenized Apple shares with the same leniency they show a spot Bitcoin ETF.