The company behind the dYdX decentralized exchange has teamed up with Robinhood to rebrand and relaunch the protocol as Arcus, operating on Robinhood Chain, the retail trading giant’s Arbitrum-based layer 2 blockchain that went live on the same day as the announcement.
dYdX becomes Arcus
An X account for Arcus confirmed on Wednesday that ‘dYdX is now Arcus’ and that the platform would launch on Robinhood Chain. The dYdX Foundation clarified that dYdX Labs built Arcus ‘in partnership with Robinhood’ and stressed that the original dYdX blockchain ‘is not affected by it in any way.’
The Foundation described Arcus as ‘a distinct, independent product built on separate infrastructure,’ with the dYdX blockchain continuing to operate under community ownership. Arcus is positioned to become Robinhood Chain’s ‘leading DEX,’ offering users access to perpetual trading products and fee-free trading across 95 tokenized stocks.
Arcus to offer perps and tokenized stock trading this month
Arcus outlined an ambitious product roadmap in a blog post: ‘Until now, traders have been shut out of the most valuable markets on earth, including US equities, commodities, and indices, because of where they live, market hours, and institutions restricting access. We built Arcus to reduce these barriers.’
The protocol said perpetuals and tokenized stock trading will go live this month, with tokenized stocks usable as collateral for perpetual positions and users gaining access to pre-IPO markets, all across 95 tokenized stocks with zero trading fees. Robinhood Crypto, the company’s crypto technology arm, made an undisclosed investment in Arcus as part of the partnership.
Robinhood targets Hyperliquid traders
Robinhood’s push into perpetual trading is a direct play for users who have migrated to Hyperliquid, the crypto perpetual futures platform whose token has climbed nearly 150% so far this year as it captured meaningful market share. Tokenized assets and perpetual trading have surged in popularity as US regulators signal growing openness to these product categories.
The launch of Robinhood Chain mirrors Coinbase’s 2023 decision to launch its Ethereum layer 2 blockchain Base, which has since grown to become the fifth-largest by total value locked according to DeFiLlama. Coinbase has also expanded its own offerings, adding access to thousands of stocks earlier this year as it competes directly with Robinhood.
Wider ecosystem adopts Robinhood Chain
Multiple platforms confirmed integrations with Robinhood Chain on Wednesday. Bitget Wallet, the self-custodial wallet from the Bitget crypto exchange, announced a partnership with Robinhood Crypto to integrate the blockchain and enable tokenized stock trading for its users. Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch said it would be among the first major swap platforms to support Robinhood Chain.
