Ether has pumped on the news, gaining around 15% from $1,582 on July 1 to $1,825 by July 13, according<\/a> to Coingecko data, following a wave of bullish comments. <\/p>\n World Liberty Financial\u2019s Eric Trump posted<\/a> on July 11, \u201cETH is pumping hard! Great to see!\u201d while Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, argued<\/a> the launch reinforces the thesis that \u201cETH is money,\u201d pointing to the asset\u2019s role as the chain\u2019s native gas token and the L2\u2019s finality on Ethereum\u2019s mainnet. <\/p>\n Ethereum investors have heard similar arguments before.<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Robinhood L2 sparks ETH optimism, Saylor \u2018muddies waters.\u2019 Hodler\u2019s Digest, July 5-12, 2026<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Arbitrum, Optimism and Base each drove waves of users and activity onto Ethereum\u2019s L2 ecosystem, but failed to move the needle meaningfully in Ether\u2019s price, as most of the economic activity remained on the rollups themselves. <\/p>\n Robinhood Chain\u2019s launch is arguably different. Unlike previous rollups built by crypto-native firms, the network was developed by a publicly listed retail brokerage with tens of millions of customers to support tokenized stocks and other real-world assets. <\/p>\n Within days of launch, it already accounted<\/a> for 6.9% of all tokenized stockholders, according to data from Token Terminal. <\/p>\n Ether price response to Robinhood Chain\u2019s launch. Source Coingecko<\/em><\/p>\n And, if Robinhood\u2019s model succeeds, it could encourage banks, brokers and asset managers to build L2s of their own, and cement Ethereum as the default blockchain for TradFi. Deutsche Bank<\/a> is already in the process of building a ZK-powered Ethereum L2 called DAMA 2, focused on institutional finance. <\/p>\n Ethereum\u2019s L2 networks use rollup technology to process transactions away from Ethereum\u2019s main chain and periodically settle them back to the network. Robinhood Chain uses<\/a> Arbitrum technology and is compatible with Ethereum\u2019s wider ecosystem.<\/p>\n But what has caught the industry\u2019s attention isn\u2019t the technology itself, as much as who is using it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a real milestone,\u201d Alex Gluchowski, founder and chief executive of Matter Labs, the developer behind Ethereum L2 zkSync, told Cointelegraph. <\/p>\n \u201cIt shows Ethereum L2s have gone from something crypto-native teams experiment with to infrastructure a regulated, publicly listed company will run its business on.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than building a blockchain from scratch, as Stripe has opted to do with Tempo, Robinhood chose to tailor an Ethereum rollup to its own needs \u201cfor privacy, compliance and performance, while still inheriting Ethereum\u2019s security and connecting to its liquidity,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Max Shannon, senior research analyst at Bitwise, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood Chain\u2019s success is more significant than previous L2 deployments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt represents the growth of the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly among major institutions,\u201d he said. \u201cIt also arrives at a time when Ethereum has more broadly repositioned itself toward institutions through Eth Labs and Ethereum Institutional.\u201d<\/p>\n For Shannon, Robinhood\u2019s launch strengthens the investment case for Ethereum because it reinforces the network\u2019s position as the leading blockchain for institutional adoption.<\/p>\n He said ETH has the \u201cnetwork characteristics\u201d to become the reserve asset for a growing network of institutional L2s. But like many, he believes Ethereum\u2019s tokenomics need to be improved so that increased network activity is reflected more clearly in demand for ETH.<\/p>\n Ethereum has been criticized frequently for its decision to lower fees for L2s as a way to spark adoption and gain network effects. Ark Invest\u2019s Lorenzo Valente posted on July 14 that Robinhood Chain had generated $816,000 in revenue since launch, with Arbitrum taking a 10% cut, but only 0.15% of the total being paid back to Ethereum. <\/p>\n \u201cIf your thesis is \u2018ETH is money,\u2019 Robinhood building here is ultra bullish. More activity, more ETH collateral, more lindyness. If your thesis is \u2018ETH is a revenue generating asset,\u2019 this is the ultra-bear case.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n GrowThePie said that Valente\u2019s figures for Eth\u2019s share of the revenue were off by a factor of four and argued \u201c0.6% of revenue is the correct figure.\u201d But even the higher figure is not a meaningful driver of revenue to the L1. Robinhood Chain generated more gas fees than any other L2 in the past week, but Ethereum only saw $4,400 of that. <\/p>\n Source: <\/em>Matze<\/em><\/a>, GrowThePie<\/em><\/p>\n Gluchowski said ETH\u2019s appreciation would not be based on fee revenue, but would likely come from becoming widely accepted money throughout the L2 ecosystems. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople might pay fees in stablecoins or never think about gas at all,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as more value settles through Ethereum, ETH starts to look less like a fee token and more like a base monetary asset for this system.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Robinhood says its AI agent feature will \u2018soon\u2019 be assisting crypto traders<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Even ETH bears like Mike Dudas from 6th Man Ventures, have described<\/a> Robinhood Chain as \u201cthe single most bullish thing I\u2019ve seen in eth-land in years.\u201d <\/p>\n But after Dudas saw Valente\u2019s post, he added<\/a> the proviso that \u201cEth cooked unless \u2018eth is money\u2019 takes off or the price of l1 settlement increases.\u201d<\/p>\n While Robinhood\u2019s success may have bolstered the case for Ethereum\u2019s scaling strategy, it has yet to settle one of the network\u2019s biggest unanswered questions: how does growing L2 activity ultimately translate into value for ETH?<\/p>\n Shannon said that recent upgrades like Fusaka have improved Ethereum\u2019s scaling capabilities, but despite transaction activity reaching record levels, demand has yet to translate into meaningfully higher fees or increased ETH burn.<\/p>\n \u201cRobinhood will not solve this problem,\u201d Shannon said, and the collective growth of L2s will likely not either\u2026 It requires a wholesale change in developer mindset and in ETH\u2019s token economics.\u201d<\/p>\n Another uncertainty is how much ETH institutional users will actually hold directly. As tokenized stocks and other RWAs increasingly trade against stablecoins, many users may rarely interact with ETH, even though it underpins the network behind the scenes. <\/p>\n Robinhood may have shown that a major financial institution is willing to build on Ethereum\u2019s infrastructure, but whether that ultimately translates into stronger demand for ETH remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Magazine <\/strong><\/em>Ethereum\u2019s much-hated staking \u2018tax\u2019 may already be obsolete<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/s3-images.ctmedia.io\/media\/content\/epp.png\")
<\/p>\nWhy Robinhood could be a turning point<\/h2>\n
Does Robinhood Chain change the investment case for ETH?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/s3-images.ctmedia.io\/media\/content\/grow-the-pie-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe value accrual question remains <\/h2>\n