Empire

How Arbitrum Landed Robinhood With A.J. Warner & Steven Goldfeder

Jul 7, 2025
Guest
Steven Goldfeder
Guest
A.J. Warner
A.J. Warner and Steven Goldfeder, both contributors at Offchain Labs, unpack the groundbreaking collaboration between Arbitrum and Robinhood aimed at tokenizing US stocks for European markets. They delve into strategic decisions surrounding blockchain integration, weighing public versus proprietary solutions. The duo highlights the benefits of Arbitrum's architecture for institutions and the evolving role of crypto in finance, especially in enhancing accessibility and user engagement in an ever-developing landscape. A fascinating look at the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain!
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ANECDOTE

Two-Year Arbitrum-Robinhood Partnership

  • Arbitrum and Robinhood built a close partnership over two years before the tokenized stocks deal emerged.
  • This deep relationship fostered trust and aligned vision for on-chain finance integration.
INSIGHT

How Robinhood Leveraged Arbitrum's Unique Flexibility to Build the Future of Tokenized Stocks

Robinhood's collaboration with Arbitrum is groundbreaking because of Arbitrum's unique combination of a robust public blockchain and a customizable stack allowing for proprietary chain creation. Robinhood launched their tokenized stocks on Arbitrum One, the public chain, to meet an urgent product timeline, with plans to migrate later to their own chain built on Arbitrum's Orbit stack, providing them flexibility without rushing chain development.

A critical feature that convinced Robinhood was Arbitrum's support for both Solidity and Rust programming languages via Stylus, addressing their engineering preferences and easing development. This optionality means Robinhood can customize gas tokens, KYC layers, and ordering mechanisms at will, making it a highly adaptive platform for their ambitious vision.

The ability to start on Arbitrum's public chain and later migrate seamlessly to a dedicated chain on the same technology stack without reworking contracts is a rare offering that helped seal the deal. This strategic partnership marks one of the most ambitious uses of crypto rails, blending crypto infrastructure with traditional finance at scale.

INSIGHT

Arbitrum's Dual Chain-Stack Advantage

  • Arbitrum uniquely offers both a live, neutral public chain and a customizable chain stack.
  • This dual approach allows Robinhood to launch on Arbitrum One immediately and migrate later to their own chain.
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