Robinhood’s Ethereum layer-2 network has crossed 200 million transactions in just over a month online, and the man running the company’s crypto operations says the secret is a deliberate balance between institutional-grade products and meme coin culture.
What the ‘Two Wolves’ Post Actually Means
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev sparked conversation on X in July 2026 with a post captioned ‘Why not both?’ alongside an image referencing the classic ‘two wolves’ meme. Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto, said in an interview with FOMO Hour on Friday that the post captures the company’s product philosophy precisely.
‘We want to show customers that we care about what they care about,’ Kerbrat said. ‘We want to make sure the chain works for what people care about.’
The ‘two wolves’ in question are serious financial products on one side, and meme coins and DeFi culture on the other. Robinhood is not picking between them.
The First Month’s Numbers
Robinhood Chain, built as an Ethereum layer-2, went live roughly a month before the interview and has already accumulated close to $800 million in total value locked, according to Kerbrat. He said the network has since processed more than 200 million transactions.
The company chose a layer-2 architecture over building a standalone layer-1 blockchain so it could inherit existing Ethereum security and decentralisation while directing its engineering effort toward product development rather than infrastructure.
Kerbrat said he also monitors developer activity as a key indicator of the chain’s health. ‘I want the chain to not just be the chain for Robinhood, but also be the chain that anyone can use and interact with our product, like our stock tokens, but also everything else that we are building,’ he said.
What Users Can Actually Do on Chain
Robinhood Chain supports roughly 200 tokenised stocks alongside stablecoin lending and perpetual futures trading. The platform frames 24-hour, seven-day-a-week access as a structural advantage for retail investors who have historically been locked out of responding to market-moving news after traditional exchange hours.
‘The world doesn’t stop on weekends,’ Kerbrat said. ‘News is happening on Fridays after market close, and people want to be able to hedge their position, which was something that was not really available to retail until recently.’
Making Room for Meme Coins
Rather than treating meme coins as a distraction from real-world asset tokenisation, Kerbrat described them as a necessary component of building liquidity on a new network.
‘We think memes are an important part of crypto. We think that for a new chain, like Robinhood Chain, these tokens have value. They bring liquidity, they bring interest from customers, especially the DeFi-type of customer that are pretty hard to move,’ he said.
‘If meme coins are something that they are extremely interested in, we want to make sure that the chain is supported for that,’ Kerbrat added.
The Bigger Target: People Who Have Never Touched Crypto
Kerbrat was explicit that Robinhood is not trying to capture users from rival blockchains. The company’s target audience is people who have never interacted with crypto at all.
‘If we see tens of millions of customers trying to use a chain, I think that will be a good win for us,’ he said. ‘We want to bring more customers on-chain and show them the benefit of the technology.’
