On-chain revenue crushes Coinbase (COIN.US): Robinhood (HOOD.US) reshapes the pattern

According to Woofun AI, Robinhood (HOOD.US) is challenging Coinbase (COIN.US)'s dominance in the US cryptocurrency market at an astonishing speed. This trend was thoroughly analyzed by Joe Zhou of Foresight News. Robinhood, once regarded as the representative of traditional retail brokerage firms, has now surpassed the established giant Coinbase in many core indicators. Its strategic focus is shifting from simple asset escrow to financial infrastructure throughout the asset chain, marking a potential restructuring of the US crypto industry's power structure.

The rise of Robinhood Chain has been phenomenal, and its trading activity and revenue capacity have jumped exponentially in a very short period of time. In September alone, the chain network achieved weekly revenue of $15.85 million. This figure not only surpassed the two top US exchanges, Coinbase and Hyperliquid, but also demonstrated its strong ability to monetize. In terms of transaction volume, the network's total transaction volume has now surpassed 750 million transactions, showing extremely high user stickiness.

Notably, since its official launch on July 1, Robinhood Chain's development trajectory has been extremely steep: by the end of July, its cumulative on-chain transaction volume had exceeded 150 million, making it the fastest EVM chain network in history to reach 100 million transactions.

This explosive growth is no accident; it is the result of the resonance between its underlying architecture and user base, laying a solid data foundation for subsequent multi-dimensional expansion.

In the forecasting market, Robinhood has found a core growth engine that surpasses traditional transactions, and this sector has become the most dynamic part of its business landscape. According to the data, in the second quarter, Robinhood's predicted market revenue surpassed the sum of its cryptocurrency trading and stock trading revenue, establishing its position as one of the company's fastest-growing business segments. CEO Vladimir Tenev made it clear that predicting the market is not only a revenue contributor, but also a key variable that drives user activity.

This optimization of the business structure allows Robinhood to no longer simply rely on volatile spot transaction fees, but instead obtain stable cash flow through highly sticky forecasting contracts, thus building a unique moat in a competitive market.

The stock tokenization business presents a complex picture where user size advantages and TVL disadvantages coexist, reflecting Robinhood's unique retail genes. Since its launch on July 1, Robinhood has quickly attracted more than 328,000 holders and taken 44% of the market share, showing its strong ability in C-side user acquisition.

However, the TVL (total hedging volume) for its stock token products is only $170 million, which is far lower than rivals Ondo and xStocks. Despite the temporary backwardness of assets, the large user base offers great potential for future asset accumulation, indicating that Robinhood is working to transform financial products into standardized services for mass consumers rather than just a few institutions or giant whales.

In terms of the DEX and meme coin ecosystem, Robinhood adopted a more aggressive strategy and successfully stimulated significant wealth effects. Its associated DEX trading volume is close to $50 billion, and weekly revenue has surpassed $10 million, creating a healthy traffic cycle. According to statistics, since August, more than six meme coins with a market capitalization of over $100 million have been issued on the network, including PONS, Artificial Inu, CASHCAT, MEME, INDEX, and FAMI. The rapid rise of these tokens has made Robinhood Chain one of the most important chain networks driving wealth creation in the current market upward cycle. PONS, in particular, once had a market capitalization close to $1 billion, with a weekly increase of more than 200%, which directly led to a sharp rise in network fees and DEX transactions, and verified the effectiveness of the untraditional path of “traffic driven infrastructure.”

This series of actions marked a fundamental reversal of Robinhood's strategy: a transformation from a retail platform to an on-chain infrastructure provider. Unlike Coinbase's gradual transformation from an independent cryptocurrency exchange to an 'all-round exchange', Robinhood started as an ordinary trading platform for the public, but is now introducing more and more financial assets into the chain. Vladimir Tenev was proud to say that Robinhood Chain broke through the 100 million transaction volume mark soon after going live, becoming the fastest chain network in history to reach this milestone. It is no longer a traditional brokerage company that is entering the cryptocurrency sector by the way, but is working to become a complete cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, with the ambition to redefine how financial assets circulate.

In the Layer 2 competitive landscape, details of Robinhood Chain's revenue spike reveal its unique competitive advantage. Over the past few years, Ethereum's Layer 2 leadership changed hands several times, first Arbitrum, then Base, and now Robinhood Chain is a strong new competitor. After the launch of the main network on July 1, its daily processing fee revenue was only 200,000 US dollars, but by the beginning of September, this figure once exceeded 4 million US dollars, and in the following week, on-chain fee revenue increased to about 25 million US dollars. On September 1 alone, DEX's daily trading volume reached around $1,595 million, on-chain DeFi deposits were around $738 million, and the total supply of stablecoins on the network was close to $800 million.

This leap from cold start to high activity in a short period of time proved the success of its user migration strategy.

Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that Robinhood's business model restructuring is profoundly affecting its revenue logic. As of the end of August, Robinhood had 28.6 million paying users and total platform assets of $38.37 billion. In August, its nominal cryptocurrency trading volume reached $17.5 billion, up 61% from the previous month; the forecast market contract volume reached $4.7 billion, a 15-fold increase over the previous year.

This growth is not an isolated phenomenon, but is closely linked to the rise of its own chain. Robinhood Chain's daily revenue climbed rapidly from less than $200,000 at the end of August to around $4.1 million on September 2.

This means that for the first time, Robinhood has its own dedicated on-chain trading venue, and this development may completely change its business model: in the past, it mainly relied on transaction fees and interest income, but now it can obtain new revenue sources through diversified scenarios such as on-chain transactions, borrowing, and liquidity provision.

Under comprehensive benchmarking, deep competition between the prediction market and stock tokenization is becoming more intense. In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood's predicted market contract revenue reached $156 million, up tenfold year over year, surpassing its $100 million in cryptocurrency trading revenue and $129 million in stock trading revenue; overall net revenue reached $1,308 million, up 32% year over year. In contrast, Coinbase predicted 106% month-on-month growth in market contract trading volume and revenue in the second quarter, with annualized revenue exceeding $100 million. In terms of stock tokenization, Robinhood promoted its products in more than 120 countries and regions, with 328,000 holders, accounting for 44% of the market share, yet the average holding amount was only $134, far lower than the $4.9 million of Securitize (SECZ.US) users. Meanwhile, Coinbase's share of the cryptocurrency exchange market in the second quarter of 2026 reached 10.3%, the average circulating supply of USDC stablecoins reached $20 billion, and subscription and service business revenue reached 555 million US dollars.

This comparison highlights the fundamental differences between the two sides in terms of user structure and asset preferences.

Looking forward to the future, the final intersection of full asset integration and a new paradigm will be the main theme of the industry. On September 29, Robinhood announced a series of new product plans, including extending stock trading hours to the weekend, introducing perpetual contracts, adding predictive market products related to corporate earnings, and further launching AI trading agents.

If these features are successfully launched, Robinhood's business model will completely surpass the traditional definition of a 'brokerage company'. Meanwhile, 88% of Coinbase's net revenue for the second quarter of 2026 came from businesses unrelated to Bitcoin spot trading, and its subscription and service business revenue also reached $555 million. This shows that the two companies are converging from different paths to the same end: Coinbase is expanding from cryptocurrency to the global financial system, while Robinhood penetrates from retail finance to the on-chain market. Ultimately, who can provide a more seamless and efficient experience at this intersection will dominate the financial landscape for the next decade.