Robinhood’s (HOOD) testnet recorded 4 million transactions in the first week its testnet chain was up and running, the investment platform’s CEO Vlad Tenev told X on Thursday.
Robinhood Chain, which focuses on tokenization and trading, comes at a time when centralized exchanges are looking to build their own blockchain infrastructure as the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future.
“Developers are already building our L2, which is designed for tokenized real-world assets and on-chain financial services,” Tenev wrote.
Testnet is a risk-free environment where developers can test their code and experimental features before going live on mainnet. The two stages of network development can be compared to flight simulators and commercial flights.
The Robinhood Chain testnet emerged against the backdrop of larger calculations in the Ethereum world.
Earlier this month, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the protocol’s long-held Layer 2 (L2) rollup-centric roadmap “no longer makes sense,” claiming that many rollups are not fully decentralized and that Ethereum’s base layer is scaling up faster than expected.
This philosophical shift has sparked debate in the Ethereum community about what scaling and meaningful decentralization will look like in 2026. But while parts of the developer community push for new frameworks, Tenev and other centralized players appear to be focusing on their own chains and tokenized markets as a way to gain users and liquidity.
This contrast highlights the growing divide in the direction of cryptocurrencies. While Ethereum’s core architects are reevaluating how scaling should evolve at the base layer, major trading platforms are seeking to take more control of the stack themselves. For exchanges, owning the infrastructure could mean enhanced user acquisition, new revenue streams, and greater influence over how the tokenization market is shaped.
Read more: Robinhood begins testing its own blockchain as crypto and tokenization push deepens
