Why Is Robinhood Building on Arbitrum Instead of Solana?
A Kraken spokesperson told Decrypt that the company is working to bring xStocks to chains beyond Solana.
Robinhood’s decision to build on Arbitrum was partly motivated by the ability to connect with other entities within Ethereum’s ecosystem, Robinhood Crypto General Manager Johann Kerbrat said.
Kraken is pushing forward with tokenized stock trading on Solana, while the exchange’s Ethereum layer-2 network has gone unused, Kerbrat noted.
A Kraken spokesperson said that the company will expand xStocks to additional blockchains, while Ink is a key part of the company’s roadmap.
Robinhood is making its biggest bet on crypto yet, announcing on Monday that it’s developing an Ethereum layer-2 scaling network for trading digital representations of assets like stocks, while similar products exist already on competing networks like Solana.
For Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood's crypto general manager, the existence of multiple projects is frustrating. Tokenization becomes less beneficial when a digital version of the same stock is issued across multiple networks beneficial because activity is siloed across ecosystems, he told Decrypt.