Surging volumes on Robinhood Chain could be very good for Ethereum, but only if the “ETH is money” crowd turn out to be right.
Robinhood Chain’s explosive launch this month has reignited one of Ethereum’s longest-running debates: Do successful layer-2 networks increase demand for ETH, the asset, or do the new entrants capture all of the value for themselves?
The retail brokerage’s Arbitrum-based Ethereum L2 has become one of Ethereum’s busiest rollups since its launch on July 1.
More than $141 million in Ether was bridged onto the chain in its first two weeks. DeFiLlama data shows more than half a million wallets now hold ETH on the network, and a memecoin frenzy saw Robinhood Chain surge past the Ethereum L1 and Coinbase’s Base L2 in 24-hour DEX trading volume.
Ether has pumped on the news, gaining around 15% from $1,582 on July 1 to $1,825 by July 13, according to Coingecko data, following a wave of bullish comments.
World Liberty Financial’s Eric Trump posted on July 11, “ETH is pumping hard! Great to see!” while Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, argued the launch reinforces the thesis that “ETH is money,” pointing to the asset’s role as the chain’s native gas token and the L2’s finality on Ethereum’s mainnet.
Ethereum investors have heard similar arguments before.
Related: Robinhood L2 sparks ETH optimism, Saylor ‘muddies waters.’ Hodler’s Digest, July 5-12, 2026
Arbitrum, Optimism and Base each drove waves of users and activity onto Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem, but failed to move the needle meaningfully in Ether’s price, as most of the economic activity remained on the rollups themselves.
Robinhood Chain’s launch is arguably different. Unlike previous rollups built by crypto-native firms, the network was developed by a publicly listed retail brokerage with tens of millions of customers to support tokenized stocks and other real-world assets.
Within days of launch, it already accounted for 6.9% of all tokenized stockholders, according to data from Token Terminal.
Ether price response to Robinhood Chain’s launch. Source Coingecko
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