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Thread Guy · · 36 分钟

Johann Kerbrat——Robinhood 的加密回归、散户入场与代币化

Johann KerbratThread Guy

加密股票区块链金融企业经营技术
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TL;DR
  • Robinhood Chain 被当作一项十年期基础设施押注管理,而不是一笔加密周期交易。 自7月1日上线以来,已处理约3.6亿笔交易,并吸引了超预期的开发者活跃度。Johann Kerbrat 仍称当前使用量“才刚刚开始”,团队依旧“像第一天一样”投入建设。

  • 2023年的收缩源于监管模糊,而不是对加密业务的战略反转。 针对主持人提到的 Robinhood 在2023年下架资产,Kerbrat 指出,当时的背景包括 Wells 通知(Robinhood 也收到了一份),以及保护其全球牌照业务的努力。Robinhood 在2018年冬天启动加密业务,当时“所有人都在说 Bitcoin 已经死了”;代币化一直是一个多年期项目,公司利用下行市场为下一轮复苏做准备。

  • Robinhood 的护城河在于分发能力,同时没有代币价格包袱。 Robinhood Chain 没有需要维护价格的原生代币,而 Robinhood 拥有2700万美国入金账户、2800万全球账户,以及现成的做市商关系。其由 Morpho 驱动的 Earn 产品将约7%的稳定币收益率放进主应用,自动创建智能钱包,已披露 TVL 约2.75亿美元,规模已跻身 Morpho 最大的金库之列。

  • 代币化股票仍处于早期阶段,目前覆盖约200只美国股票和 ETF,但其最强逻辑在于改善市场结构,而非制造新奇感。 即时结算本可能改变围绕 GME 讨论的资金锁定问题;全天候交易让投资者可以对周五晚间的新闻即时反应;链上碎片化则保留了 Robinhood 让用户以1美元起步的能力。Kerbrat 的目标,是在不要求客户关心交易是否上链的前提下,交付这些好处。

  • Robinhood 初期瞄准的是美国以外、缺乏低成本券商服务的人群。 随着私人资产、房地产和其他市场逐步代币化,Kerbrat 认为这一机会还会扩大。他也将股票代币视作一种可组合的基础原语:可用于抵押、微型贷款,或与出人意料的 meme coin 配对,从而形成溢价、套利和流动性机会。

  • Robinhood 想掌握的是界面,而不是底层的每一套协议。 公司没有选择自建所有 DEX 或永续合约引擎,而是将钱包体验与 Lighter 的后端结合,并从 BitGo、Privy、Fireblocks、Chainlink 等多家供应商组建托管和预言机基础设施,同时接入多个 DEX。Robinhood 向开发者提供的是主应用入口,以及未来覆盖120多个国家的扩张路径,而不只是又一条独立链。

  • 让散户上手,意味着隐藏加密基础设施,同时为高级用户保留退出通道。 Kerbrat 说,加密行业是“工程师为工程师打造的”;因此 Earn 抽象掉钱包、Arbitrum、L2 和交易授权,但仍允许用户将私钥导出至 MetaMask。产品是否成功,取决于成本、速度和易用性等客户痛点,而不是 Robinhood 是否攫取每一层经济价值。

摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. Robinhood 的加密战略穿越周期

  • Kerbrat 不接受主持人将 Robinhood 新一轮加码描述为市场情绪驱动的说法:公司在2018年冬天就启动了加密业务,当时“所有人都在说 Bitcoin 已经死了”。主持人将2023年与 Robinhood 下架资产联系起来;Kerbrat 则将监管不确定性和 Wells 通知(包括 Robinhood 收到的通知)视为背景,认为当时的防御性决策是为了保护其全球牌照业务。

  • 代币化已经推进了多年,包括 Vlad 在一年多前刊登于《华盛顿邮报》的评论文章。Robinhood 的做法是在下行市场建设产品,让客户在市场活跃度恢复时拥有新功能;股票代币已经出现“周末发生数百万笔交易”的情况,这是传统金融系统无法实现的。

  • Robinhood Chain 自7月1日上线以来已处理约3.6亿笔交易,开发者参与度也让它在 L2 中成为最活跃的网络之一。Kerbrat 的目标看向十年后,届时区块链预计将取代传统系统的大部分功能;眼下的增长也只是“才刚刚开始”。

2. 分发能力让 DeFi 进入主应用

  • Robinhood 的一项结构性优势,恰恰是它没有推出链上代币。Kerbrat 称,代币价格管理是“我们没有的干扰项”;Robinhood Chain 是由2700万美国入金账户、2800万全球账户和长期做市商关系支撑的基础设施。这些关系也有助于支持并提升 DeFi 股票代币产品的合法性。

  • Earn 展示了这种分发能力如何运作。该 Morpho 驱动的产品在 Robinhood 主应用内为稳定币提供约7%的收益率;客户参与后,Robinhood 会自动创建智能钱包,并将代币直接借入链上金库,无需用户管理私钥。

  • Robinhood 曾披露约2.75亿美元的 TVL,该金库已经跻身 Morpho 最大金库之列,并且仍在增长。Kerbrat 预计客户会先进行测试,再逐步增加配置;余额每隔几秒更新一次,资金积累可以即时看到。主持人的反应是:“Morpho 这件事太疯狂了。”

3. 代币化靠市场结构证明自身价值

  • 主持人的质疑值得保留:代币化叙事已经跑在指标前面。Kerbrat 也承认行业仍处于早期阶段:真正持有链上钱包的人相对较少,Robinhood 目前提供的也只是约200只美国股票和 ETF,仍是 NASDAQ 和 NYSE 上市标的中的很小一部分。

  • 即时结算是最清晰的反事实。Kerbrat 表示,如果当时不需要在交易结算期间锁定巨额资本,Robinhood 面对的 GME 问题不会以同样的方式发生;如果链上能在几分钟甚至几秒内完成结算,“那会是一个完全不同的世界”。

  • 第二个突破口是全天候交易:“世界在周末也会变化。”新闻可能在周五收盘后发生,投资者却要等到周日晚间或周一早上才能对冲;Robinhood 已经看到大量股票代币在周末交易。碎片化也天然存在,保留了推动 Robinhood 早期增长的1美元入场门槛。

  • Robinhood 初期会在两类人群之间优先服务后者:希望延长交易时间的现有美国客户,以及无法进入美国市场的人。Kerbrat 指出,欧洲一些券商仍在收取佣金或设置最低交易金额,而手机和互联网已经广泛普及;随着私人资产、房地产以及更多国家的证券加入,代币化现实世界资产可能逐步吸引更多用户。

4. 可组合性比垂直掌控更重要

  • Kerbrat 将股票代币视为“一种新的基础原语”,类似于永续合约——后者约在十年前由加密行业创造,如今正越来越多地影响传统金融系统。一旦股票敞口可以在链上使用,它就能成为抵押品、支持微型贷款,或成为 Robinhood 原本没有预料到的产品的原材料。

  • 股票代币与 meme coin 配对就是一个意外案例:这种组合暴露出溢价、套利机会和新的流动性。Robinhood 并不将 RWA 和 meme coin 视为两个彼此割裂的世界;低延迟、快速出块和低 gas 费同时服务于两者。Kerbrat 谨慎补充道:“我认为这条链的市值已经超过10亿美元。”

  • 当被问及为何接入 Lighter、而不是自建永续合约交易所时,Kerbrat 表示,Robinhood 完全可以自建 DEX 和永续合约引擎,但资源优先级更重要。Robinhood 将精力集中在简单易用的钱包界面和下单体验上,由 Lighter 提供后端支持;主持人则认为,移动端永续合约仍是一个规模庞大、尚未充分开发的市场。

  • 这次上线的技术栈包括 BitGo、Privy、Fireblocks 等提供的托管服务,覆盖股票代币产品的 Chainlink 集成,以及多个 DEX。Robinhood 对开发者的主张是,这条链“不是一个边缘项目”:它连接主应用和钱包,支撑新功能,并计划帮助 Robinhood 扩展至120多个国家。

5. 当客户看不见链时,链才真正有用

  • Robinhood 拥有13条业务线,每条年收入至少1亿美元,覆盖信用卡、银行、券商和期权。Kerbrat 将 Robinhood Chain 称为“明日的基础设施”:稳定币可以让国际电汇更快,并可能降低外汇成本;代币化可以进入传统券商难以服务的市场;链上借贷则能减少侵蚀收益的中间环节。

  • 主持人进一步追问其中的经济取舍:Robinhood 可以掌控每一家 DEX 和永续合约交易场所,但代价是放弃开放网络效应。Kerbrat 表示,产品路线通常不会从收入最大化开始,而是从客户痛点和产品市场匹配开始。以加密订单为例,Robinhood 会将订单交给相互竞争的做市商,以压低价格,同时仍能从低成本的链上活动中赚取排序器费用。

  • Kerbrat 自己在2015年或2016年前后开设的第一个 Robinhood 账户,把一笔小额存款变成了对股票、经济学和金融的持续学习。他的启示是,很多人害怕“迈出第一步”,尽管越早养成金融习惯,复利时间就越长;Robinhood 现在希望覆盖用户人生中的每个阶段,包括儿童 Trump Accounts、退休账户、券商账户和联名账户。

  • 对于加密行业,他的诊断很直接:这是“工程师为工程师打造的”。Kerbrat 指出,交易授权可能直接耗尽一个钱包;主持人则回忆起自己过去“奶奶要有一串 seed phrase”的判断。Earn 隐藏了 Robinhood Chain、Arbitrum 和 L2 的运作机制,但允许用户将私钥导出至 MetaMask。主持人承认,时代已经变得黏滞;Robinhood 现在希望吸引覆盖 RWA、预测市场、银行基础设施和 meme coin 的开发者,找出市场仍然缺失的东西。

完整逐字稿
Thread Guy

Yo, yo, yo, what is good? It is Thread Guy, and I'm back with a recorded episode today. I'm joined by Johann from Robinhood, who is making the rounds right now on the podcast circuit. Are you sick of doing these yet?

Johann Kerbrat

No, it's actually pretty fun. I love talking to the teams.

Thread Guy

I know, I've enjoyed it. I've seen you on quite a few. You've had some really good ones. I don't usually love the intro question, but you might be new to some faces on YouTube, especially. Do you want to give us just a quick intro into who you are and what you're working on right now?

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. Well, I'm Johann. I lead the crypto business at Robinhood. I've been at the company for more than 5 years, and before that I worked on payments and crypto for a very long time. So I'm really excited about talking today about the Robinhood Chain, Robinhood Wallet, and everything that we are doing in crypto at Robinhood.

Thread Guy

I love it. Thanks for being here. Also, quick lore: I'm from Northern Virginia, and I know Vlad went to TJ, so he's a Virginia—he's a local legend—

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah.

Thread Guy

—in my town, so shout-out to Vlad as well. But I mean, I guess to start, Robinhood Chain is live. You guys have really made a splash. I'm live every day talking crypto, TradFi stocks, and doing a lot of on-chain stuff, and Robinhood and Robinhood Chain have just been a topic of our stream every single day for the last couple weeks, definitely the last couple months here. I'm curious: how would you grade and think about the success of Robinhood Chain so far, and what were your expectations in really making this push?

1. Robinhood Chain Takes Off

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. I think we're pretty happy to see the engagement. Some stuff that we were not expecting was how many developers would be building on the chain right away. We've seen on L2s, for example, that Robinhood Chain was one of the most active from a developer standpoint, so that was really exciting.

I think we were expecting a lot of enthusiasm around a company like Robinhood, which was more on the traditional finance side of things, getting all into crypto. But right now, we're really looking 10 years out. The target is when the blockchain is going to replace a lot of our traditional system. Not just the usage that we're seeing right now—it's just at the very beginning. So there's still a lot of work to do.

The teams are still cranking. We launched on July 1, and we've seen about 360 million transactions so far. The team is still working like it was day one, really trying to make sure that we have the whole ecosystem to support developers, as well as all the use cases that our customers are looking for.

Thread Guy

So, Robinhood kind of has this interesting story with crypto specifically, right? There's this 2023 bear market, crypto's a mess, and there's the infamous delisting of Solana and other assets. It's funny how it plays out because we get into 2026, where you could argue crypto sentiment is as low as it's been in a long time—maybe since FTX, maybe worse than FTX—and Robinhood is like, "You know what? Now is the time. We're going to make the push and double down on Robinhood Chain, double down on crypto."

Could you walk me through the hero's journey progression of how we got back to here, with Robinhood taking crypto as seriously as it is right now?

2. Building Through The Bear

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. I wouldn't say sentiment is what has been driving some of these changes in strategy. If you think about it, we launched crypto at Robinhood in 2018, in the winter of 2018, when everyone was saying that Bitcoin was dead, when all the NFTs took a huge hit, and all the ERC-20s as well. We still got feedback from customers that they wanted to be able to trade and hold all these crypto assets. So even if sentiment was at its lowest, Robinhood still launched crypto.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

So I wouldn't say sentiment is what's driving us in terms of strategy and roadmap prioritization. I think what happened in '23 was very different. There was regulation that was not very clear. There were Wells notices being sent left and right. Robinhood also received one.

We were also trying to protect the business as a whole and make sure that we were working with the regulator the way that we've been working with them since the launch of the company. We have licenses across the globe, and so for us it's very important that we make sure we work with regulators in a great way and make sure that we can still support our customers as a whole.

But the vision of the chain, the vision of tokenization, has been multiple years in the making. Vlad published an op-ed in The Washington Post more than a year ago explaining how tokenization is going to take over the financial system. That's really the vision that we've been working on for multiple years now.

Right now, seeing the cycle, it's more a focus on building for us. What we've been doing is, every time there's a bit of a down market, we make sure that we build features that people are excited about. When the market is coming back up, people can actually utilize all the features that we built.

The chain, the tokenization effort, all of that has been in the making for multiple years, and we're very excited to finally start seeing that happen. For example, we launched stock tokens on our chain. We see millions of trades happening on weekends—things that are not possible using the traditional system. That's the stuff that's really making us excited to keep going.

Thread Guy

I think as someone that's so focused on crypto, it's inspiring to see Robinhood do it now because, if you're really close to crypto and spend a lot of time trading on-chain, interacting with perps, trading on Lighter and Hyperliquid, and interacting with your primitives, you see that underneath the price, there's real innovation happening.

But I would argue that the macro TradFi global sentiment is really, really bad. I'm curious from your perspective, because you definitely have better—or at least a different—set of eyes on it than I do: what is the broad perception of crypto right now? More importantly, how do you think Robinhood's legitimacy can be used to leverage that into a more positive light? How does that evolve?

3. Robinhood Distribution Wins

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. I think the big difference that we're seeing between Robinhood and some of the other chains and projects is, one, to begin with, we didn't launch a token with our chain.

For us, the blockchain is a technology. It's going to be the infrastructure that supports all this new development that we're doing and all this new build that we're launching. We don't have as much of this constant prioritization change because we're trying to keep a token up or flat in terms of pricing. I think that's a distraction that we don't have, and it's a huge advantage for us as a company.

The second thing is that we have this distribution. We have 27 million funded accounts in the U.S., and 28 million globally. It makes a huge difference when we launch projects to actually have this influx of customers utilizing the blockchain.

We launched Robinhood Earn, which is our lending protocol, with Morpho, where you can earn approximately 7% right now on your stablecoins.

Thread Guy

Nice.

Johann Kerbrat

That's on the main app, right? Anyone using their Robinhood account—the 27 million funded accounts—can see this. When they interact with it, we will create a smart wallet for them. We will lend their tokens directly into our vault on the chain.

That makes it super easy for people to access this technology. They don't have to create a self-custody wallet with a private key and everything. Everything is done for them.

The third part is that Robinhood has this massive business with multiple market makers on the crypto side, but also on the traditional equity side. When we're building new projects, all these institutions are actually excited to work with us because they've been working with us for multiple years.

For us, it's actually a lot easier to bring legitimacy to products like the DeFi stock tokens, for example, where we have major market makers behind them to support them.

Thread Guy

The Morpho thing is crazy. I think people forget that. It's in the main app.

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah, it's in the main app. We're introducing millions of customers who haven't touched crypto or blockchain technology before directly to our chain. They don't necessarily have to understand the underlying part.

The same way that when they send a text or an email, they don't really understand the protocol and don't really care about it. They just want the email to be sent, right?

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

It's the same thing here. They get the benefit of the high yield that we can get on DeFi, and they also get the convenience of having it within the main Robinhood app.

Thread Guy

How is adoption on that product so far? I know it's very, very new.

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah, it's been very good. We passed our TVL—I think we published around $275 million, and I think since then we continue to grow. It's one of the top vaults already on the Morpho protocol, so we're pretty excited by seeing the adoption. And I think it's just the beginning. I think a lot of people are going to try it and see how it works.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

And then slowly put more money into it. One thing that I think is really cool in the future—I don't know if you tried it—but when you put money on it, it will automatically update every few seconds.

Thread Guy

Wow.

Johann Kerbrat

And so you see your money accumulating right away. So I find it very cool.

Thread Guy

Yeah. Get those dope mean heads in.

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah.

Thread Guy

So I think the thing we've seen, at least narrative-wise, really with Robinhood Chain is the perspective of tokenized stocks and RWAs. In crypto, we've sort of distilled the narratives down. There aren't that many things to get excited about, but the things to get excited about are potentially massive, right? Perps—huge. Huge, huge, huge idea. Tokenized stocks, RWAs—it's a huge idea.

And so we've sort of focused, I think, around these couple of optimistic verticals that have infinite potential. In a lot of ways, I feel like the rhetoric around tokenized stocks is as optimistic as it could possibly be, but the metrics show it's not really happening yet, right? Everyone's talking about it everywhere you look: tokenization. Brian Chesky, CNBC, Bloomberg—everyone's talking about tokenization. Vlad: “Tokenization, tokenization, RWAs, RWAs.”

But the metrics show that it's going up and to the right, but it isn't like everything is on-chain right now. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just early? Is it maybe a relatively niche concept that isn't going to eat everything? Why do you think the metrics and the rhetoric are separate?

4. Tokenized Stocks Go Global

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. I think we're at the very beginning, in my opinion.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

If you think about the amount of people that just have a wallet to begin with and interact on-chain, it's a very small portion compared to the rest of the global population. And if you think about tokenization of assets, there still aren't a lot of them. You have U.S. stocks and ETFs like us, where we created a stock token that gives you exposure to them. We have about 200 that are available right now, but it's still a small amount compared to what's available on NASDAQ and NYSE.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

It's also hard to get other exchanges or private stock and things like that. So we're just at the early, early stage. But where I get excited is seeing the instant-settlement piece. If you think about what happened at Robinhood with GME, this would not have been a problem if we had instant settlement, where we didn't have to lock up a massive amount of capital because you can just sell within a few minutes, or even seconds, on-chain.

The second piece is the 24/7 element. The market is moving during the weekend. The world moves during the weekend, right? You get news sometimes happening after hours on a Friday, and people have to wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning to basically hedge their position. You actually see a lot of our stock-token volume happening on the weekend.

And I think that's a huge element as well, because now you can actually trade news and think about your portfolio when you're not working, necessarily. I'm working all day long. I don't necessarily have time to manage my portfolio. I do it at night or on the weekend. So that's the kind of thing that I get really excited about.

And also fractionalization. Fractionalization is a huge element for Robinhood. Why we were successful at the beginning was allowing anyone to invest with as little as $1, because not everyone can afford a share of Amazon right away or a share of Microsoft right away. All of that, you get by default on-chain. You also get other elements like transparency and decentralization. You get better access, better latency—all these kinds of things.

So I think we're just at the beginning. It will take time to move the entire financial industry, right? We have some hedge funds or some companies that are still using technology that was built 20 years ago. To move them on-chain, it's going to take some time.

But the idea for us is really: How do we bring these values that I just mentioned—24/7, instant settlement, all of this—to our customers without them necessarily having to worry about whether it's on-chain or not on-chain? They just want to be able to trade the asset—

Thread Guy

To trade—

Johann Kerbrat

—that they are looking for, and then we will optimize for the rail that makes the most sense for them.

Thread Guy

It's crazy that GME couldn't have happened—the Robinhood GME situation couldn't have happened with instant-settlement tokenized stocks.

Johann Kerbrat

It would have been different. It would have been—

Thread Guy

It would have at least been different.

Johann Kerbrat

—a very different world.

Thread Guy

Yeah. Yeah, that's wild. I'm curious: What do you think is a bigger market? When I think about the marginal user of Robinhood tokenized stocks, is it a bigger market for Americans that are already on Robinhood and can now trade after hours and on weekends, or is it non-Americans that maybe don't have easy access to the American stock market and can now potentially access tokenized assets?

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. Right now, we've been focusing on that latter point: people that are not necessarily able to access the U.S. market. If you look, for example, in Europe, a lot of brokers are still charging commissions or asking for a minimum before investing. If you look in different countries and different parts of the world, going to a brokerage in-house or a bank is actually pretty difficult. They don't necessarily have easy access there.

But most people now have access to the internet and have access to a phone where they can have their wallet. That's the type of market where we think there is something to do—where really anyone can start thinking about investing and start building their portfolio and their wealth through tokenization.

And I think the more you'll be able to add different types of assets from different parts of the world, or maybe private assets or maybe real estate, the more you'll see people slowly migrating into these tokenized RWAs—

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

—and understanding their value.

Thread Guy

And so, in a more niche market, I'm trading on-chain all the time, just paying attention to what's happening and experimenting. I know you're aware of what's happening and paying attention as well, and it seems like the first use case that I've had my hands on with tokenized stocks is creating meme coins or some sort of on-chain asset and pairing them with these stocks.

Some of these—most of these things are niche. Some of them have gotten a lot of traction. There have been some cool spots where there was GME, GME, and because there wasn't that much tokenized GME, the price went crazy, and people were minting new shares and arbing the price back and forth. It just sort of creates this new environment, if you will.

So I'm curious: Where do you see the evolution of tokenized stocks when it comes to being composable with other protocols? How experimental does it get? Is there anything that you want to see get built that doesn't really exist yet? How do you think that plays out?

5. Composability Opens New Markets

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. I see it as a primitive—a new primitive. You talked about perps earlier. I think it's something that is really exciting for the crypto space. It was invented about 10 years ago.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

And now we're actually seeing more and more traditional systems starting to use perps, and I think that's the type of innovation we want to see. I think stock tokens are a perfect example, where you can have this type of composability, using them as collateral in different places and being able to create microloans on top of them. There is so much to be done. We're just at the beginning.

Right now, we're focusing on giving the primitive to people and developers—giving access to these stock tokens. But I'm pretty excited to see what people are going to build on them.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

The meme-coin pair, for example, is something that we didn't think about.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

People putting memes against stock tokens, necessarily. But I think it's cool. You can see premiums, you can see arbitrage opportunities, and you see liquidity coming in.

I think that's the beauty of blockchain and crypto: You have so many brains from across the world working together on building new things that they're creating stuff we never thought about. And overall, the idea that meme coins and RWAs are two different things isn't really something that we're thinking about.

We built our chain to be optimized for very low latency, very fast block times, and cheap gas. Obviously, that works for both RWAs, but it also works for meme-coin trading and other types of assets that we're seeing on the chain.

We also saw a major pair creating more and more volume over the past couple of weeks. It’s all part of the process where liquidity has to come into the chain, and it’s starting to really increase. I think the market cap has already passed $1 billion on the chain, so then you need market makers, crypto-native people, and the non-crypto-native people we’re trying to bring in with Robinhood.

Thread Guy

You mentioned perps. I’m a huge Lighter fan. I’ve had Vlad on the stream a couple of times now, and I think Lighter’s an incredible product. I use Hyperliquid all the time. I’m curious how you think about integrating with Lighter versus building your own Robinhood perpetuals, versus a perpetual platform that is only on Robinhood Chain. How do you think about working with Lighter versus doing it yourself, or working with someone that’s only on Robinhood Chain?

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. Really, for us, the goal is always: How do we get the most value to the customer? How do we bring the best experience for the customer?

I think we could have built a lot of things ourselves on the chain. We could have built our own DEX; we could have built our own perps DEX. But at some point, we also have to understand prioritization and what we’re really good at. I think what Robinhood is really good at is creating unique user experiences and very easy-to-use products.

Partnering with perps DEXs, spot DEXs, or other platforms is just a great way for us to focus on what we do best. We build the UI and UX on the Robinhood Wallet to use the perps product, and it’s pretty easy to use, I think.

Try it one day and you’ll see. It’s different from what we see on some other platforms, where it’s more web-first and pretty hard, in my opinion, to set all your orders and different parameters. We really focused on that aspect to make sure that it was one of the best, if not the best, UX and UI available for perps trading.

The engine in the back is powered by Lighter, and we have some pretty fun things coming up with Lighter around their points program with the Robinhood Wallet. We’re also pretty excited about that.

Thread Guy

I’m excited to see what you guys do with mobile perps, which is a huge market that’s fairly underexplored, because obviously Robinhood Mobile is the experience. I’m excited to see what you do there.

How do you think about attracting developers to Robinhood Chain, where you do have a lot of competition? Even though crypto is in somewhat of a downturn activity-wise, there are a lot of competitive places to go, right?

Solana had a crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy run. Base, while it isn’t the flashiest chain right now, is Coinbase, and Coinbase is crypto in a lot of ways. Then there’s Robinhood Chain, among a few others. How do you think about why somebody would come build their protocol on Robinhood Chain?

6. Making The Chain Core

Johann Kerbrat

I think what we did well was have a lot of partnerships ready for the launch of the chain. We have multiple custody providers, from BitGo, Privy, Fireblocks, and others. We have multiple oracles. Chainlink is probably the one we’re most embedded with across all our stock token products.

Like you said, we have multiple DEXs as well. We made sure that we had skills for AI development if you wanted to create your own wallet with Prevy, or trade directly on Uniswap with different scales. All of this was done in a way to create the environment to support any developer and make sure that they have everything they need to build on top of the chain.

The main reason we see developers getting excited is that they understand the chain is not just a side project for Robinhood. It’s going to be core to our strategy. We’ve been very vocal about the fact that it’s in the main app, not just in our wallet. It’s also in our wallet, but it’s in the main app.

We’re using it in some of the features that we’re currently launching. We want to do more with tokenization. We want to use the chain and our wallet as a way to expand internationally in 120-plus countries. It’s really core to our strategy.

A lot of developers understand that this will allow them to tap into the distribution Robinhood is going to bring to the chain, whereas some of the other chains are still at the beginning of attracting users and customers. Right now, our goal is to make sure that we can support them.

When people reach out, we’re always trying to make sure that they get what they’re looking for. Based on the feedback we get, we’ll also be able to improve the chain and make sure that we build anything that’s missing for them.

Thread Guy

On that side-project point, it’s a good callout. Historically, exchanges that have had blockchains have run into this issue where they’ve never really formalized the relationship between what is the exchange, what is the blockchain, and how do we intertwine them.

I think the one that’s probably done it the best is Binance. You have BNB Chain, and if you’re a token that is very successful on BNB Chain, you get listed on Binance Alpha. If people like it on Binance Alpha, you eventually make it to the exchange. You have this vertical integration stack.

I think the one that’s gotten the most criticism was Coinbase, because Coinbase launched Base, and it’s kind of unclear what makes it to Coinbase, what Coinbase wants, how the two things intertwine, and what this looks like. I’m curious: What is the formal relationship between Robinhood Chain and Robinhood, and how do you think about these things intertwining?

Johann Kerbrat

We really see the chain as the infrastructure of tomorrow. A lot of the systems that we’re using across all the different businesses—we have 13 different business lines at Robinhood that are making $100 million or more in revenue.

Just to give you an idea of the variety of businesses that we have: credit card, banking, brokerage, options. For us, a lot of the value we see on the blockchain is not just this idea that you can transact using wallets and everything, but everything that we’ve talked about, from instant settlement and transparency to better rails for sending wires, for example.

When people are going to use banking, right now we’re still using ACH and some of the traditional systems. But you could see a world where, if a Robinhood customer is sending a wire across the world, they could benefit from crypto rails using stablecoins, because we would have faster delivery and potentially cheaper FX. These are the kinds of things we’re thinking about.

For us, the goal has really been to make sure that the chain isn’t just going to be that side product, as I was mentioning, but also something that any team or any business across the company can tap into if they see some value from it.

That’s where we’re going to see it with tokenization. In places where we’re saying, “Hey, it’s actually too hard for us to offer the traditional brokerage system,” we were able to launch through our stock tokens product.

With the Earn product, instead of creating a lending program that is manual, with a lot of middlemen where everyone is taking a cut and therefore reducing the return, we were able to launch it through the chain. That’s kind of the idea.

We’re also making sure that we’re supporting our developers. We recently listed one of the tokens that was first on Robinhood Chain. We’re really going to make sure that the chain is part of the strategy at Robinhood.

Behind the scenes, when we talk with Vlad and the rest of the leadership, the chain is always part of the discussion: Where can we utilize the blockchain to bring value to the customer, reduce costs, or improve speed?

Thread Guy

To follow up on that, with Robinhood Chain, how does Robinhood handle the distinction between which financial services are best on-chain versus off-chain?

Off-chain, Robinhood can own the full stack and have full control. With some of these products built on-chain, maybe they get a ton of activity and Robinhood doesn’t get as much economic upside, but you get the decentralization of ideas and allow people to build on top of it.

There’s an argument to be made that Robinhood should just build and own every single product in the stack: own every DEX, own the perp. It would be the most economically viable, but then you would lose the network effects. It’s obviously a tightrope that you have to walk.

How do you think about what belongs on-chain versus off-chain, what should be owned by Robinhood versus left to the free market?

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah.

I will say, when we work on the roadmap and on new features and things like that, we rarely think about how to optimize for the best revenue outcome for the company. Obviously, sometimes we think about it.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

We’re still a for-profit company. We’re still looking at how to make revenue, but we really have this core value that we call customer-centric, where we want to put the customer at the center and really understand what pain point they’re having and how we fix it.

When you do that, a lot of the time you’re actually going to make the decision very easy. My example is around sending a wire. The customer pain point is usually the foreign exchange fee and the time that it takes for the wire to settle. If we can do the same thing using stablecoins and make it cheaper for the customer, there’s absolutely no reason for us not to do it, because people will actually come to Robinhood to utilize our product because it’s better than what they have on the competing product.

That’s always the concept that we have here: trying to get to product-market fit first, or trying to attract customers because of our better products, versus optimizing just for revenue. I think it’s been working pretty well for Robinhood.

There’s a ton of stuff that we haven’t done internally. For example, when you place a trade on Robinhood Crypto and you buy crypto, we actually send it to multiple market makers. The reason why we do that is to put the market makers in competition, to drive the prices down on the crypto that you’re buying. The result is that we’re one of the lowest-cost places to buy crypto in the U.S., for example.

That’s the type of stuff that we’re really trying to optimize. We’re always finding new ways to generate revenue on our side. Even if it’s happening on the chain, and to your point, we may be losing some of the value to a perps DEX or to a spot DEX, we also get sequencer fees on our side. Even though we have very low gas fees, we still get some of that. That generates revenue.

It’s always a trade-off, but for us, what’s really important is what can benefit the customer and how we make the product better for them.

7. Onboarding Crypto For Everyone

Thread Guy

And I guess on the point of the best product for the customer, one of the last things I want to ask you about is Robinhood’s onboarding sauce. I’m 24, so I was getting financially literate in the viral era of Robinhood. All my friends are on it. I was learning how to trade options in high school and whatnot.

In a lot of ways, Robinhood invented the playbook, or popularized the playbook, for retail trading and getting normal people financially literate with financial products. I’m curious, as much as you could say about it, what is that sauce?

The reason I ask is, to the point of whether that same strategy can work in crypto, there’s always been this clashing idea that we throw around: onboard retail, onboard retail. What exactly does that mean? Is that a stock trader depositing money to earn yield into one of the Morpho pools on the Robinhood app, or is it bringing somebody on-chain to trade meme coins? I don’t entirely know what it means, but I’m curious how that onboarding sauce works as it relates to crypto.

Johann Kerbrat

Yeah. You know, I’m a lot older than you, so I didn’t have the same training.

I didn’t really learn about economics or finance at school. I didn’t learn it from my parents because they didn’t really have any money to worry about. I think, for us, when I started to actually learn about it was when I opened my first Robinhood account in 2015, I think—

Thread Guy

Wow.

Johann Kerbrat

Around 2016. I put a little money into it, and then slowly I started to track the portfolio and the stocks, trying to understand the metrics. More and more, I spent time on it, and then I was really hooked. I spent my weekends learning about economics and finance.

I think that’s what we need to do for a lot of folks. A lot of folks are just worried about taking the first step and really understanding what finance can do. That’s the sad part about it, because the earlier you start implementing some financial hygiene into your life, the more you’re going to get a compounding effect until you retire.

That’s where we’re really trying to push Robinhood, where we have the Trump account now—

Thread Guy

Yes.

Johann Kerbrat

—for your kids, if you just have babies. We have a retirement account as well, the brokerage account, and the joint account. All of these things are about having a version of Robinhood at every step and every big milestone of your life.

That’s what we’re trying to do with crypto. I’ve been in crypto since the beginning, around 2010. I always felt it was made by engineers for engineers.

Thread Guy

Yeah.

Johann Kerbrat

The first time you try to create a wallet and you have to authorize a transaction, if you authorize the wrong transaction and your wallet is drained, this is not made for everyone.

When I joined Robinhood, the idea was: how do we bring the 20 million-plus customers that Robinhood had on-chain without them necessarily having to worry about all the chain complexity?

That’s where I’m really excited about the Earn product that you mentioned, because a lot of people don’t need to understand what a blockchain is, what Robinhood Chain and Arbitrum and Layer 2s are, and everything else. They just want to get the better product at the end of the day.

For us, that’s what we’re going to try to do more and more: give people the education when they want to know and learn more. For example, if you want to export your wallet from the Robinhood app using the Earn product, you can take the private key and utilize it on your MetaMask or whatever wallet you want.

But for most people, I don’t think they’re going to use these options. They’re just happy with it on Robinhood. More and more, we’ll see some features using Robinhood Chain in the background, while others may not. It’s just about creating the better product for the customer.

Thread Guy

I like the “by developers, for developers” thing. It’s funny. I remember, in 2020 and 2021, when I was really trading crypto, having this conversation with my dad where I was like, “Man, you know, Grandma’s going to have a seed phrase and a MetaMask back in the day.”

He’s like, “I don’t think so.”

I’m like, “No, no, no. It’s get with the times or get left behind.”

But then you realize the times are sticky; they have their own way. You actually have to get with the times, not vice versa.

It’s inspiring to see what you guys are doing, and I really appreciate you coming on. I guess, as a final question to leave the audience with: especially for developers and people who are building stuff, what are you guys looking for? What does Robinhood Chain want to see? What are you trying to push people to work on? What verticals do you want to see innovation in?

What are you guys excited about and want to see more of?

Johann Kerbrat

Really, we’re excited about everything that we’ve been seeing so far, so it’s hard to pick. I think there’s still a lot of work to do on RWAs, prediction markets, banking rails, and also meme coins.

We’ve seen new launchpads being created on the meme side. We’ve seen these pairs trading with RWAs, and more and more being created.

For us, we just want feedback, actually, to be honest. Tell us what’s missing on the chain that you need to develop the product you’re trying to launch, and we’ll try to make it happen.

Thread Guy

Johann, it was awesome, man. By the way, I think we all appreciate the podcast tour you’re going on. You guys are active, you’re listening, and you’re going on the shows. Hopefully we get to do a part two sometime, but congratulations on everything.

Johann Kerbrat

Sounds good.

Thread Guy

I’m looking forward to seeing how you guys progress here.

Johann Kerbrat

Sounds good. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Thread Guy

Of course. Thanks, everyone, for listening. I’ll see you on the next one. I’m out. Peace.