Robinhood’s (HOOD) testnet saw four million transactions in the first week its testnet chain went live, the investment platform’s CEO Vlad Tenev said on X on Thursday.
The Robinhood channel, which focuses on tokenization and trading, comes at a time when centralized exchanges are looking to build their own blockchain infrastructure even as the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future.
“Developers are already building on our L2, designed for real-world tokenized assets and on-chain financial services,” Tenev wrote.
Testnets are risk-free environments for developers to test experimental code and features before their mainnet goes live. The two stages of network development could be compared to a flight simulator and a commercial flight.
The Robinhood Chain testnet arrived against the backdrop of a broader reckoning in the Ethereum world.
Earlier this month, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the protocol’s Layer 2 (L2) rollup-centric roadmap “no longer makes sense,” arguing that many rollups have not achieved full decentralization and that Ethereum’s base layer is evolving faster than expected.
This philosophical shift has fueled discussions within the Ethereum community about what large-scale, meaningful decentralization might look like in 2026. But while some in the developer community are pushing for new frameworks, Tenev and other centralized players appear to be doubling down on proprietary chains and tokenized markets as a way to capture users and liquidity.
The contrast highlights a growing divide in crypto leadership. As Ethereum’s lead architects re-evaluate how scaling should scale on the base layer, major trading platforms themselves are seeking more control of the stack. For exchanges, owning the infrastructure could mean closer user capture, new revenue streams, and greater influence over how tokenized markets take shape.
Read more: Robinhood begins testing its own blockchain as crypto and tokenization deepens
