Developers
2 Curated Dialogues
Johann Kerbrat
Key Views & Dialogues
Johann Kerbrat - Robinhood’s Crypto Comeback, Onboarding Retail & Tokenization
Robinhood Chain is being managed as a ten-year infrastructure bet, with roughly 360 million transactions since July 1 and unexpectedly strong developer activity, while its 27 million funded U.S. accounts and 28 million globally provide distribution without a native-token burden. The Morpho-powered Earn product, approximately 7% stablecoin yield, and tokenized stocks covering about 200 U.S. stocks and ETFs show the strategy’s market-structure ambition, but adoption, regulatory clarity, and whether customers value hidden blockchain infrastructure remain key variables.
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- Robinhood Chain is being managed as a ten-year infrastructure bet, not a crypto-cycle trade. Since its July 1 launch, it has processed roughly 360 million transactions and attracted unexpectedly strong developer activity. Johann Kerbrat nevertheless calls current usage “the very beginning,” with the team still working “like it was day one.”
- The 2023 retrenchment reflected regulatory ambiguity, not a reversal on crypto. Against the host’s backdrop of Robinhood’s 2023 delistings, Kerbrat points to Wells notices, including Robinhood’s, and an effort to protect a globally licensed business. Robinhood had launched crypto during the winter of 2018, “when everyone was saying that Bitcoin was dead”; tokenization has remained a multiyear project, with down markets used to build for the next recovery.
- Robinhood’s moat is distribution without token-price baggage. The chain has no native token to defend, while Robinhood brings 27 million funded U.S. accounts, 28 million globally, and existing market-maker relationships. Its Morpho-powered Earn product puts approximately 7% stablecoin yield inside the main app, automatically creates a smart wallet, and had disclosed around $275 million of TVL—already among Morpho’s top vaults.
- Tokenized stocks remain early—about 200 U.S. stocks and ETFs—but their strongest case is market structure rather than novelty. Instant settlement could have changed the capital lock-up problem discussed around GME; 24/7 trading lets investors react to Friday-night news; and on-chain fractionalization preserves Robinhood’s ability to start users at $1. Kerbrat’s objective is to deliver those benefits without forcing customers to ask whether a trade is on-chain.
- Robinhood is initially aiming stock tokens at people outside the United States who lack inexpensive brokerage access. Kerbrat sees the opportunity widening as private assets, real estate, and other markets become tokenized. He also treats stock tokens as a composable primitive—usable as collateral, for microloans, or in unexpected meme-coin pairs that create premiums, arbitrage, and liquidity.
- Robinhood intends to own the interface, not every protocol underneath it. Rather than build every DEX or perpetuals engine, it paired its wallet UX with Lighter’s backend and assembled custody and oracle infrastructure from BitGo, Privy, Fireblocks, Chainlink, and others, alongside multiple DEXs. Developers are being offered access to Robinhood’s main app and planned expansion across 120-plus countries, not merely another standalone chain.
- Retail onboarding means hiding crypto’s machinery while leaving an exit for advanced users. Kerbrat says crypto was “made by engineers for engineers”; Earn therefore abstracts wallets, Arbitrum, L2s, and transaction approvals, while still allowing private-key export to MetaMask. The product test is customer pain—cost, speed, and usability—not whether Robinhood captures every layer of economics.
Robinhood’s Plan to Bring Global Finance Onchain | Johann Kerbrat
Three weeks after launch, Robinhood Chain reported $750M market cap, roughly half a billion in TVL, 105M+ transactions, 2M addresses, and over $560M in 24-hour DEX volume, with DAU comparisons dependent on measurement. Its Arbitrum stack atop Ethereum prioritizes adoption over chain-fee revenue, while Robinhood’s 27M funded accounts distribute crypto products; tokenized equities offer a global-access wedge whose catalyst remains regulatory clarity, not technology.
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- Three weeks into its July 1 launch, Robinhood Chain has put up numbers that contend with Base: ~$750M market cap, roughly half a billion in TVL, 105M+ transactions, ~2M addresses, and over $560M in 24-hour DEX volume. Kerbrat hedges the DAU-flipping-Base chart — “the data always depend on how you slice it” — but confirms Robinhood is top-tier on daily active users and developers, crediting a launch ecosystem of perps, spot DEXs, Earn, and stock tokens rather than a bare chain launch.
- The chain is built on the Arbitrum stack on top of Ethereum for “liquidity, decentralization, security,” with no token planned right now — ETH is the gas asset. Kerbrat says: “we don’t have any plan for token… if tomorrow there is a real reason to have a specific token that will give benefits to the customer, that’s something that we could look into” — and he explicitly won’t optimize chain fees for revenue: “less about optimizing for revenue and more optimizing for adoption.”
- Crypto is one of 11 Robinhood business lines each doing at least nine figures in revenue, with its own P&L. Trading fees are still the largest crypto line, layered with staking, lending, Bitstamp’s institutional exchange, and a crypto-as-a-service white-label business already used by European banks including BBVA — plus Robinhood Canada, live since July 1.
- The partner playbook is often deep integration with one or a few names per category, not breadth: Morpho powers Earn at a deliberately stable ~7% rate, insured through Lloyd’s of London in “probably one of the largest insurance program for crypto.” There’s no rev share with Morpho; the Lighter perps rev share is “public. It’s on the contract.” Kerbrat’s candid leverage admission: “the most useful part of being Robinhood is that I can reach out to almost anyone, and they usually pick up the phone” — backed by 27 million funded accounts.
- Tokenized equities are “underhyped” in Kerbrat’s view, and the binding constraint is regulation, not technology. Not compelling for Americans buying US stocks, but transformative for global access — “if I ask you tomorrow to buy a stock on an Indonesian exchange… you can’t do it right away” — and eventually extending to real estate, art, and private equity, with the on-chain/off-chain distinction abstracted away: “most customers won’t care if it’s on chain or off chain.”
- The Wall Street story is all three at once: a revenue stream, an international-expansion shortcut, and a wedge into DeFi-native users Robinhood previously never touched. Building US-style Robinhood country-by-country “will take a long time”; a self-managed wallet in 120+ countries gets there faster, and Kerbrat says the on-chain DEX activity — about half a billion in 24-hour volume — was mostly from “pure DeFi customers” who came from other chains.
- On competition, Kerbrat declines the knife-fight: “we are still way too small to just focus on that. Let’s focus on increasing the pie.” Vlad is described as deeply into crypto and, with Baiju, as defending it during the 2018 “crypto is dead” era; the one internal tension Kerbrat mentions is pace — “he will always want us to move faster.”