Robinhood Chain, the blockchain launched by US brokerage Robinhood earlier this month, has climbed to the top of crypto developer activity rankings in less than two weeks, a rare feat for a new network and another sign that traditional finance companies are gaining traction in Web3.
The significant event became known after the CEO of Alchemy Nikil Viswanathan stated on X on July 21 that Robinhood Chain had “just hit #1.” As Alchemy is one of the partners for launching the network, it is also possible to verify the information from Electric Capital’s live Developer Report dashboard, which monitors the number of active open-source developers on a monthly basis using a rolling 28-day window of code contributions.
By the time of writing, Robinhood Chain occupies the first place in the list of blockchain ecosystems monitored in particular by the dashboard.
Unlike rankings based on GitHub stars or social media buzz, Electric Capital takes a different look at developers based on their actual code contributions. As many developers work on different blockchains at the same time, the rankings illustrate where the development efforts are going instead of which networks developers work on exclusively.
Robinhood brings a different advantage
The fact that Robinhood’s growth has occurred so swiftly is remarkable given that developer ecosystems typically take months or even years to develop.
As per the 2025 State of Crypto report by a16z, Ethereum and its layer-2 networks emerged as the primary destination for developers in the year 2025. The early success of Robinhood Chain indicates that many Ethereum developers did not experience much difficulty switching to the new network.
This isn’t surprising because Robinhood Chain is completely compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and operates based on the Arbitrum technology, making it possible for developers to transfer the existing solutions without creating something completely new. Also, the research conducted by Electric Capital has shown that crypto developers tend to work on several platforms instead of focusing on just one ecosystem.
Unlike the majority of new blockchains, Robinhood came into existence with certain benefits. The company has nearly 28 million consumers across 38 countries as well as started its network in collaboration with established partners like Alchemy, BitGo, Chainlink and Uniswap. For developers, it means having instant access to widely used infrastructure and large potential user base.
Developer growth comes with equal user popularity. Cryptopolitan previously reported that Robinhood Chain outperformed Coinbase’s Base in daily transactions shortly after launching and went on to also overtake competing EVM chains in terms of daily active wallets, which means that the network’s growth goes beyond developer interest.
Strong early network activity
Robinhood introduced the public mainnet during its London keynote on July 1, positioning the Layer-2 blockchain as a bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s general manager of crypto and international, said the company’s goal is to make blockchain technology easier for everyday investors to use.
“We’re bringing the best of traditional finance and DeFi together.” — Johann Kerbrat, General Manager of Crypto and International at Robinhood
Early users have adopted the service quickly. On July 14, according to Kerbrat the network had already processed over 52.5 million transactions, while it had come close to 1 million addresses in less than two weeks. Total value locked (TVL) in the network exceeded $323 million meanwhile, weekly volume of decentralized exchanges surpassed $3 billion, referring to the research from Bernstein.
Robinhood is also increasing the availability of its blockchain products. Its Stock Tokens are available in about 120 countries, depending on local laws, while eligible US users can now earn about 7% interest on $USDG stablecoin via Morpho lending protocol.
$USDG was launched in November 2024 by Global Dollar Network. Robinhood, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, and Paxos were among the founding members of the network.
It remains to be determined if Robinhood Chain continues to be in the top spot among developers, given how rapidly Electric Capital’s data gets updated in relation to new code contributions.
However, achieving a top position in one of the most followed metrics in the crypto world within a couple of weeks shows how fast an existing financial service can bring in developers, especially when utilizing Ethereum compatibility, mature infrastructure, and access to millions of potential users.
