Yesterday Robinhood launched its own blockchain, an Ethereum Layer 2 using Arbitrum technology. While we’ll briefly cover the raft of DeFi features launched at the same time, we believe there are two aspects of the news that may be underappreciated. The company launched a different type of tokenized stocks, and we will delve into what that means and why. But the bigger reason this launch matters is because it could be one of blockchain’s genuine steps into the mainstream.
Until now DeFi applications have mainly been available to those willing to venture into self hosted wallets, or in a few cases via crypto exchanges. Now Robinhood is making DeFi apps as easy to use as conventional stock and derivatives trading. And it has 28 million users.
The last time blockchain seemed poised for mass adoption was the NFT boom of 2021, which was killed by a combination of scams and terrible usability. Robinhood’s approach addresses both problems. It offers regulated financial products instead of speculative JPEGs, and wraps them in a consumer app that hides the underlying complexity.
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