Robinhood Chain has done what few Layer 2 networks manage in a full year, all in eight days. The Arbitrum-powered network logged $500 million worth of trading volume on Uniswap on July 8th.
With $100 million in total value locked (TVL) and nearly 200,000 cumulative addresses, it makes the second-biggest Uniswap deployment by 24-hour trading volume, trailing only Ethereum mainnet.
DeFiLlama data shows that the total value locked (TVL) on the platform surpassed $106 million, marking an increase of 159% within a 24-hour period.
Ethena and Morpho Drive the TVL Surge
Morpho is the lending protocol that runs the estimated 7% annual percentage yield (APY) on USDG deposits for Robinhood Earn, with almost $90 million of Robinhood Chain’s total value locked (TVL) held on the platform.
Ethena’s $50 million single-day deposit into a vault managed by Steakhouse Financial on Morpho is the driving force behind the 159% increase.
Ethena’s $50 million single-day deposit on a Steakhouse Financial-managed USDG vault on Morpho is driving the 159% surge. That’s because the figure in the headline is more indicative of DeFi-native institutional capital than the 27 million retail users that Robinhood has.
From the start, all of Uniswap’s versions (v2, v3, and v4) and UniswapX shipped on the Robinhood Chain. The Uniswap chain’s first week saw cumulative volume reach over $250 million, with a single-day surge to $500 million on July 8. Unwrapped Ethereum (WETH), memecoins, and tokenized stock tokens like NVDA, AAPL and GOOG led volume.
ARK Invest had already moved on the broader crypto stock narrative before this launch, as it was reported earlier this week that ARK Invest bought crypto stocks. A sign that institutional appetite for RWA-adjacent plays was building heading into Robinhood’s mainnet debut.
Vlad Tenev’s Meme Pivot and What Comes Next
Earlier, Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev stated that the company had its sights set on real-world assets and tokenized equities. On July 8, he posted part of that back on X: “As we develop Robinhood Chain into the best chain for RWA… it’s a great chain for memes, too.”
While we’re building robinhood chain to be the best chain for RWA … it works great for memes too
— Vlad Tenev (@vladtenev) July 8, 2026
On the same day, Pump.fun introduced direct support of Robinhood Chain tokens, allowing users to trade SOL without having to bridge. The integration was met with instant traction, with Memecoin CASHCAT gaining a significant boost in popularity.
According to a fresh SEC filing, Tenev converted and sold 375,000 Class B HOOD shares at prices between $112.22 and $118.13, pocketing approximately $43.6 million. The sale, executed under Rule 10b5-1, occurred as HOOD had already rallied more than 40% over the prior month, partly on the chain’s launch momentum.
UNI, the native token of Uniswap, rallied by as much as 14% due to the surge in volume. The chain operates with 100 millisecond blocks as compared to the 12-second average on Ethereum, and Chainlink is offering oracle infrastructure for tokenized equities. Robinhood is also waiving gas fees for the first 90 days, which is having an impact on activity.
As traders watch to see if Robinhood Chain’s early success can lead to sustainable revenue post-fee generation, $HOOD and the wider Crypto Stocks to watch are now getting more attention.
In January 2026, the SEC’s guidance highlighted tokenized debt securities, which are the type of securities Robinhood is structured around, for increased scrutiny. Even within a single protocol, TVL risk exists: any disparity in the rotation of liquidity from Morpho’s could cause the headline figures to come in very tight.
