TL;DR:
Robinhood officially launched Robinhood Chain, its layer 2 blockchain based on Arbitrum, integrating directly with Arcus, a new decentralized exchange developed by dYdX Labs in partnership with the company. The initiative was announced today and stands as one of the company’s most ambitious moves in the crypto market.
The rebrand was confirmed through Arcus’s official account on X, where it was announced that “dYdX is now Arcus” and that the protocol will operate on the new network. The dYdX Foundation clarified that the change is independent: the original dYdX blockchain is not affected and will continue operating under its community’s governance. Arcus is, according to the Foundation, “a distinct and independent product, built on separate infrastructure.”
dYdX is now Arcus.
A leading DEX on Robinhood Chain.
24/7 trading on 95 stock tickers with 0% fees, and liquidity from top institutional market-makers. pic.twitter.com/BQz0WAoTXM
— Arcus (@arcus_xyz) July 1, 2026
The protocol aims to become the primary DEX on Robinhood Chain. It will offer perpetual futures and commission-free trading of 95 tokenized stocks, with the ability to use those assets as collateral to trade in derivatives markets. It will also offer access to pre-IPO markets, a category historically reserved for institutional investors.
“Until now, traders have been excluded from the world’s most valuable markets —U.S. stocks, commodities and indices— by their place of residence, market hours and institutional restrictions,” Arcus stated in a post published on its blog.
Several perpetual futures platforms, such as Hyperliquid, have scaled massively over the past year: the protocol’s native token has gained nearly 150% year-to-date. Robinhood seeks to capture part of that demand.
Other companies also joined the launch. Bitget Wallet, the self-custodial wallet of the Bitget exchange, announced an integration with Robinhood Crypto to allow its users to trade tokenized stocks within the new network. Swap aggregator 1inch also announced it will be one of the first platforms to support the new blockchain.
This move recalls the launch of Base, the layer 2 blockchain by Coinbase built on Ethereum, introduced in 2023 and currently ranked among the five networks with the highest total value locked according to DeFiLlama.
