Robinhood (HOOD) CEO Vlad Tenev and other executives unveiled what the company described as its "most ambitious global expansion and product vision to date" on Wednesday. During a livestream dubbed "The World is Flat" from the Old Royal Naval College in London, the team outlined its expansion to new regions and plans to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi.
"Decentralized finance unlocks possibilities beyond what traditional finance can offer, but historically, it has required technical expertise to navigate," Johann Kerbrat, SVP and General Manager of Crypto and International at Robinhood, said in a statement shared with The Block ahead of the event. "We're bringing the best of traditional finance and DeFi together, and in doing so, expanding financial ownership to every corner of the globe."
The company officially launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 network built using Arbitrum's tech stack "to institutional standards." Previously debuted on public testnet in February, Robinhood Chain day one partners include Uniswap, which is deploying a dedicated AMM to serve as a primary public liquidity protocol, and Pleiades, which is deploying a proprietary AMM to serve as a primary prop trading venue, the firm said. It also includes integrations with Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink, plus "out-of-the-box DeFi primitives" like lending and borrowing.
