Solana Foundation Executive Chase Barker Suggests Robinhood's Robinhood Chain Should Abandon Arbitrum
Chase Barker, an executive at the Solana Foundation, stated that Robinhood's Robinhood Chain should abandon the use of Arbitrum, citing that the layer-2 network cannot effectively scale in terms of performance and costs, and its centralization limits development in multiple ways.
He proposed two options: building a new high-performance chain or migrating directly to the high-performance public chain Solana. He did not disclose Robinhood's response, nor did he provide a migration timeline or cost comparison data.
Robinhood Chain is a permissionless Ethereum layer-2 based on Arbitrum, aimed at on-chain financial services and tokenizing physical assets. The public mainnet is set to launch on July 1, 2026, with a block time of 100 milliseconds. Initial partners include Uniswap, and it supports stock tokens for Nvidia, Google, and Apple.
One week after launch, the prediction market World.xyz migrated from Solana to Robinhood Chain, citing lower costs and access to Robinhood's retail users. Robinhood has not exited Solana: since 2022, it has offered SOL trading and staking, and these services remain available.
According to DefiLlama, the chain has a total value locked of approximately $107.8 million, a stablecoin market cap of about $246.8 million, and an on-chain physical asset market cap of around $12.5 million. Among active retail tokens on the chain, the token named CASHCAT had a market cap close to $150 million, with over $159 million in 24-hour trading volume, with liquidity sourced from Uniswap V3 and external launchpads, not from Robinhood's app.
The suggestion comes from a Solana Foundation executive, while the recipient has not yet appeared. The event is driven by the competition between public chains for brokerage-owned chains, not a completed migration. If Robinhood moves to Solana, the sequencer fees and ecosystem projects would leave Arbitrum; if it remains on Arbitrum, Solana would only receive a public suggestion. The beneficiaries are the underlying chains that can access brokerage user entry points, while the pressured party is the layer-2 solution that has been named as unable to scale.
Barker did not specify the team, budget, or remaining contract duration with Arbitrum for building a new chain.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Robinhood will launch its own chain on Arbitrum on July 1, 2026, with a block time of 100 milliseconds, initially integrating with Uniswap and offering stock tokens for Nvidia, Google, and Apple. Chase Barker's suggestion comes about three months after the mainnet launch. Robinhood has been offering SOL trading and staking since 2022, and the choice of chain is handled separately from the listing of trading pairs.
No funds have been announced to transition from Arbitrum sequencers to Solana validators. The two options provided by Barker focus on costs and performance at layer-1, rather than continuing to incur Ethereum layer-2 data costs. World.xyz migrated from Solana to Robinhood Chain on July 8, citing costs and retail access, indicating that brokerage users are indeed the target for migration. The total locked value of approximately $107.8 million and stablecoin market cap of about $246.8 million on DefiLlama is still smaller than Robinhood's in-app stock accounts.
In comparison, Coinbase uses the Optimism stack for Base, keeping brokerage users on its own sequencer; and Sony uses Soneium for a layer-2, rather than migrating accounts back to the public chain. Robinhood is currently in a stage of entry control. Its own chain is already live, and Solana aims to replace the settlement layer of this chain.
Essentially, it is a transfer of pricing power. Brokerages determine which chain the user's first transaction occurs on, while the underlying chain can only compete on sequencing and costs. The mechanism allows layer-2 to leave scaling to Arbitrum and Ethereum, while public chain foundations aim to reclaim the same batch of users through performance and decentralization. Until the suggestion is implemented, the 100-millisecond block and Uniswap pools will still be recorded on Arbitrum's books.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Brokerages choose chains, determining user entry points, not technical papers.
Own chains keep costs within their own sequencers.
Suggestions can change narratives but cannot sign migration for others.