Robinhood Launches Perpetual Futures In Europe, And Its Own Blockchain — HOOD Surges 8%

Robinhood (HOOD) confirmed Wednesday it is launching perpetual futures for eligible European users and unveiled a set of new products spanning its own blockchain and decentralized lending. The announcement pushed HOOD up 8.3% to close today’s trading session at $108.65. 

What Robinhood Just Built 

The European perpetual futures launch is the most immediately concrete piece of the announcement. Eligible users across the region will be able to trade contracts with no expiry date tied to commodities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and currencies including gold, silver, crude oil, and the euro-dollar exchange rate. 

Beyond Europe, the bigger structural story is the launch of Robinhood Chain — the company’s own Layer 2 (L2) blockchain, now live on public mainnet. Built on the Arbitrum (ARB) platform, the chain is natively connected to Robinhood’s existing on-chain user base and aims to give developers an environment to build on. 

Day-one partners include Uniswap (UNI), which is deploying a dedicated automated market maker to serve as the chain’s primary public liquidity protocol, and Pleiades, which is building a proprietary trading venue on the same infrastructure. 

Further integrations with Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink underpin the technical architecture, with “fast block times” and built-in lending and borrowing functionality included from launch.

The Quieter Half Of The Story 

Running alongside the chain is a new Stock Tokens product, now available through the Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, though availability varies by jurisdiction, the firm’s announcement said. 

The tokens allow eligible users to trade tokenized US stocks on Robinhood Chain, and open up decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases that traditional equity ownership has never permitted — including deploying stock tokens into lending pools and using them as collateral for trading across the broader DeFi ecosystem. 

On the lending side, the firm launched Robinhood Earn — a product that lets eligible US users lend their USDG stablecoin, the firm’s own dollar-backed token, through a self-custody wallet at an estimated annualized return of 7%. 

The product comes with insurance coverage for certain losses caused by cyberattacks or smart contract exploits, arranged through Lloyd’s of London and RELM — an unusual but notable feature for a DeFi lending product aimed at retail users.

Robinhood further said it plans to roll out crypto trading in the United Kingdom (UK) as part of a push to build a comprehensive investing platform for the region. The company also confirmed its entry into Canada following the completion of the WonderFi acquisition.

Featured image from PYMNTS.