According to latest reports, Robinhood Chain has emerged as the dominant player in the tokenized stock market, with RWA TVL accounting for approximately 4% of total chain activity. The platform launched in June 2026 with zero-commission trading for over 7,000 US stocks and ETFs for non-US users, subsequently announcing bStocks: tokens backed 1:1 on the BNB Chain with 24/7 trading, initially including Nvidia, Tesla, Circle, Micron, and SanDisk. Fund flows demonstrate Robinhood's competitive advantage, with the platform adding over $300 million in tokenized stock funds in its first 30 days, compared to $33 million for xStocks and $13 million for Robinhood during the same period. The platform has integrated Virtuals Protocol's agent infrastructure from day one, with agent transaction volume reaching $150 million by July 17th, and developers earning $2.3 million in the first week alone. As per AMBCrypto, Robinhood Chain is now rivaling Base on key metrics after just three weeks since its debut, with both L2s achieving weekly active users of about 1 million and Robinhood Chain seeing much larger traction and DEX volume in recent days.
Jesse Pollak, creator and co-founder of Base, has acknowledged Robinhood Chain's competitive edge while downplaying its threat in the tokenized stocks race. In a recent statement, Pollak said, "One thing Robinhood Chain has done right is have tokenized equities in an EVM environment. We've been behind on this on Base, and I'm frustrated that's the case." Pollak confirmed that Base was "close to fixing it with Coinbase," stating they would have 1:1 backed equities (vs. Robinhood's derivatives) that should scale much better from a trust, capital efficiency, and institutional acceptance. As reported by AMBCrypto, Pollak emphasized that most tokenized stocks are synthetics or derivatives that offer exposure to price performance and not voting rights, while noting that even Ondo's tokenized offerings are 1:1 backed but lack voting rights and have reinvested dividends rather than shared directly. To correct their mistakes, Base has pivoted to trading, tokenization, payments, and AI agents, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong agreeing they missed the tokenization wave by putting effort into social experiments like creator coins.
Despite Base's early start, Robinhood Chain is challenging its dominance in key metrics, with the platform now rivaling Base across DEX volume, users and revenue. As per AMBCrypto, Robinhood Chain took less than a month to challenge Base's position as the third-largest chain for speculative trading. The competitive landscape has intensified as tokenized stocks grow within the wider real-world asset market, with RWA.xyz data placing the tokenized stock market at approximately $1.85 billion. Other launchpad options include RobinPad using Uniswap v3 with 1% pool fees and RobinLaunchpad offering broader asset creation features. Robinhood Chain operates as an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain using Arbitrum's optimistic rollup protocol with chain ID 4663, making it fully compatible with existing Ethereum development tools and featuring infrastructure from third-party providers including Alchemy, Chainlink, Uniswap, and BitGo.
According to Bernstein analysts, Robinhood's distribution moat could provide a massive advantage over Coinbase and Base, with the broker having 27 million funded accounts and being 'uniquely' positioned to win as retail trading moves onchain. As per AMBCrypto, analysts believe Robinhood's distribution could rally the stock, HOOD, to as high as $160. The platform's design goal is that each stock token is roughly 1:1 hedged by US stocks or ETFs held in custody by affiliated entities, though the system lacks public proof of reserves and third-party verification. The approximately 1:1 hedging is merely a statement, without confirmed proof of reserves; private company tokens explicitly do not offer 1:1 hedging and are non-redeemable. The PONS Launchpad continues to offer a simplified entry point for token creators, enabling permissionless smart-contract deployments for the creation of fixed-supply, community-driven assets without custom logic.
The planned Base product would use equities backed 1:1 by underlying shares, contrasting with Robinhood's stock-token structure. Coinbase announced in June that its planned tokenized stocks for non-US customers would represent equity ownership and include dividend payments and shareholder rights. Pollak emphasized that the proposed model "should scale much better from a trust, capital efficiency, and institutional acceptedness," though this reflects his view of the proposed structure. Robinhood's stock tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited (RHJ), with holders gaining economic exposure to underlying stocks but having no legal or beneficial ownership of actual shares. The broader RWA sector has reached $31-34 billion excluding stablecoins, with Ondo Global Markets dominating with approximately half the market and 260+ stocks, while Backed Finance's xStocks leads in holder count with approximately 162,000 compared to Ondo's 70,000, with cumulative trading volume of over $25 billion.
