Robinhood Crypto Chief Reveals: Memeification and Tokenization of Stocks Drive Customer Acquisition Strategy, Each Business Line Has Achieved Over $100 Million in Revenue

Original Article Title: Johann Kerbrat: Inside Robinhood's Crypto Strategy (Full Explanation)
Original Source: TheRollup
Original Translation: DeepTech TechFlow

Disclosure

Johann Kerbrat is a senior executive at Robinhood, responsible for the entire product line of the crypto business (including Robinhood Chain, Tokenized Stocks, Staking Services, Perpetual Contracts), with his compensation and equity incentives directly tied to the $HOOD stock price. All discussions about the Robinhood Chain in this issue involve the business he directly oversees. The title uses an "insider's perspective" rather than "analysis" to reflect this relationship.

Summary

Three weeks after the launch of the Robinhood Chain mainnet, the weekly DEX trading volume surpassed $30 billion, with over 105 million transactions and a TVL exceeding $3 billion. Johann Kerbrat explained the chain's strategic logic for the first time on a podcast: why choose a "barbell" strategy (meme tokens + real-world assets in parallel), why use the Arbitrum technology stack instead of building a custom L1, and how to gradually move Robinhood's 27 million deposit accounts onto the chain. He clearly stated that the competitive focus is on "growing the pie" rather than competing with Base, and revealed that tokenized stocks already cover 120+ countries, 90+ underlyings, and will expand to international stocks and the private markets in the future.

Key Quotes

"Our philosophy is to make the chain permissionless and open to everything. Whether it's meme tokens, RWA, or many other products, we welcome them all. We are deeply integrating with the chain."

"Robinhood has 27 million deposit accounts. For these users, DeFi is still too complex and requires too much technical knowledge. What we are thinking about is how to bring over the good products from DeFi, while making it user-friendly, easy to use without creating a wallet, or dealing with private keys."

"I think competition ultimately benefits the customer. We significantly reduced fees when we launched crypto trading. It is still early for on-chain, discussing market share is premature."

"We have only been live for three weeks. If you are thinking about bringing tens of millions of users to the chain, bringing more utility, bringing something people actually use (not just a momentary fluctuation), then you are thinking about a long-term revenue stream."

“We don't want to see all of Robinhood's trading activity on-chain next year. That's a bit of a pipe dream. But if we can achieve things that traditional methods can't, such as international stocks, 24/7 trading, then the chain can be a solution.”

Part One: Three-Week Launch Data: $30 Billion Weekly Trading Volume Is Just the Beginning

The host kicked off with a set of numbers: After the launch of the Robinhood Chain mainnet, the weekly DEX trading volume reached $30 billion, with over 50 million trades, over 1 million addresses, and TVL exceeding $300 million.

Kerbrat's response was very straightforward: These numbers have already been surpassed. He said the number of trades had exceeded 105 million that morning. He described the team's state as "very excited," with the core point being that this number reflects the market's strong demand for on-chain products.

He particularly emphasized that the ecosystem was ready from the start to onboard developers, rather than building first and then waiting for people to come. This is different from the path of many L2s that first go live and then gradually attract users.

Part Two: "Barbell" Strategy: Why Meme and RWA Run in Parallel

The host mentioned an interesting phenomenon: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev described the on-chain ecosystem as having a "barbell" structure on social media, with one end being meme tokens and the other end being real-world assets (RWA), and said, "You have two wolves inside you."

Kerbrat explained the internal thinking. The chain was set from day one to be permissionless, open to all types of applications. Meme tokens bring in market makers and DeFi users, while RWAs serve users globally who cannot easily buy US stocks and ETFs. The two are not contradictory but attract different groups.

He also mentioned several integrated products that have already launched: Robinhood Earn (earning stablecoin yields through on-chain protocols within the main app) and tokenized stocks (tradable via Robinhood Wallet in 120+ countries).

The host followed up on the differences from traditional financial products. Kerbrat listed the issues in the traditional system: wire transfers can only be done between 9:30 and 4:00, commission-free brokers only operate during market hours on weekdays, and options and futures contracts expire. The on-chain version is a superior solution from a product perspective.

Part Three: How to Move 27 Million Accounts Onto the Chain: The Integration of DeFi and CeFi

Kerbrat highlighted a key figure: Robinhood has 27 million funded accounts. Most of these users have not interacted with DeFi as it is still complex and requires a lot of technical knowledge.

His solution is to achieve a "win-win" situation: leverage DeFi's underlying technology to provide high yield, while using Robinhood's front end to offer a simple UX/UI and security protection. Robinhood Earn is an example where users can earn on-chain rewards within the main app without needing to create their own wallet or manage private keys.

He described this trend as the "Integration of CeFi and DeFi": centralized platforms leveraging blockchain technology to create better products while maintaining a user-friendly experience.

Regarding the technical implementation of tokenized stocks, Kerbrat revealed the "just-in-time tokenization" mechanism. Traditional DEXs require pre-building liquidity pools, but Robinhood, being a broker itself and holding these stocks, can swiftly move stocks onto the blockchain when users need to trade. A combination of prop AMM, standard AMM, RFQ, and classic pools is used at the backend to ensure good prices at all times.

Currently, there are 90+ stock tokens on-chain, but he believes this is just the beginning, and in the future, it will expand to international stocks, private markets, and more asset classes.

IV. Why Choose Arbitrum: The Logic of Not Building L1

The host posed a technical architecture question: Why use Arbitrum's technology stack instead of building your own chain?

Kerbrat's answer was very pragmatic. Robinhood wants to focus on what they excel at: providing excellent UX/UI, delivering financial products, rather than rebuilding something that already exists. Achieving Ethereum-level security and decentralization takes a long time and involves many decisions (such as the transition from PoW to PoS, collaboration among multiple foundations). Directly using Ethereum's security and the liquidity of the EVM ecosystem is a more sensible choice.

The reasons for choosing Arbitrum as the L2 technology stack include Stylus (which allows smart contracts to be written in any programming language), extremely fast block times (financial products require high speed), low gas fees (even during periods of high transaction volume). He also mentioned that when on-chain activity surged last week, they proactively reduced gas fees to ensure an uninterrupted user experience.

Regarding the Ethereum "rent" controversy (Robinhood Chain generated over $1 million in revenue but only paid Ethereum 1-2%), Kerbrat views this as part of Ethereum's default mechanism and does not consider it unfair. His perspective is long-term: if Robinhood can bring tens of millions of users onto the chain, creating real-world use cases, this will ultimately become a long-term revenue source for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Five, Competition with Base: Growing the Pie Instead of Grabbing Market Share

The host mentioned the "artificial competition" on social media between Robinhood Chain and Coinbase Base. Base recently admitted the failure of their social experiment and shifted focus, while Robinhood is also exploring the possibility of on-chain social trading.

Kerbrat's attitude towards competition is clear: competition is good for customers. When Robinhood launched crypto trading years ago, they significantly reduced fees, ultimately benefiting users. However, discussing market share too early is premature; Robinhood Chain is only three weeks old, while Base has been running for one or two years.

He used a statistic for comparison: currently, only a tiny percentage of the global population holds tokenized assets. His goal is to grow the pie, allowing more people globally to own assets, rather than fighting for a share in the existing small pie. Regarding Base's social experiment, he commented, "Trying new things is normal; sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed."

Robinhood's focus is on financial products: Earn, spot trading, perpetual contracts. These are areas they excel in and can bring value.

Six, Logic for Choosing DeFi Partners

The host listed the partners announced at the launch of Robinhood Chain: Morpho (Lending Treasury), Lighter (Perpetual Contracts), 0x (Aggregation and Quoting API), Chainlink (Oracle), LayerZero (Cross-chain).

Kerbrat explained the three criteria for selecting partners. First, Robinhood is a publicly-traded company with multiple global licenses, and partners must understand regulatory requirements and cooperate. Second, partners must be able to create a unique experience. For example, when collaborating with Morpho, it goes far beyond simple API integration to require customized stable rates, insurance mechanisms, and exclusive UX, necessitating extensive deep discussions and joint development. Third, partners must differentiate from competitors.

Regarding the timeline for introducing perpetual contracts (perps) to the US main app, Kerbrat stated they are still awaiting regulatory clarity; even if the CLARITY Act passes, perpetual contracts pose another major issue. Currently, through the collaboration with Robinhood Wallet and Lighter, users can experience perpetual contract trading. He also revealed that Bitstamp (the European exchange platform acquired by Robinhood) is already expanding perpetual contracts from crypto to commodity and ETF contracts.

7. From Brokerage to Super App: The Investment Thesis of $HOOD

The final topic returned to the investment perspective. The host asked: What does holding $HOOD stock mean now?

Kerbrat outlined Robinhood's vision as a "super app": stocks, options, futures, prediction markets, crypto, credit card (just launched a platinum card today), banking services, AI-powered trading (MCP already available). The core is to create an app that meets all of the users' financial needs across different life stages.

He specifically mentioned the lack of financial education: young people do not learn financial knowledge in school, but they need to start thinking about retirement planning right after high school graduation. Robinhood aims to focus on financial education, with the IRA account being one example.

From a business model perspective, currently, each business line has reached nine-figure (hundreds of millions of dollars) revenue, with diversified revenue streams, no longer just a pure trading platform. Regarding the revenue from the chain itself, Kerbrat admitted that the focus now is on adoption rate rather than pure revenue. The gas fee setting is a balancing act: too low will be susceptible to spam transactions and bot abuse, while too high will hinder adoption. Currently, the focus is on "optimizing for adoption" rather than "optimizing for revenue."

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