Arcus brings zero-fee tokenized US stocks to Robinhood Chain
A decentralized exchange backed by Robinhood Crypto has launched zero-fee, round-the-clock trading of tokenized US equities, accelerating crypto's push into traditional market structures.
Arcus has launched zero-fee, 24/7 trading for more than 95 tokenized US stocks on Robinhood Chain. The decentralized exchange, developed by the team behind dYdX, also introduced beta perpetual futures covering equities, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies.
Traders can now access tokens tied to major technology and semiconductor names like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla. The perpetual markets feature products linked to benchmarks like SPY and QQQ, as well as commodities such as gold and oil through GLD and USO tokens. Demand for the futures product appears strong, with a waitlist exceeding 75,000 signups.
The platform operates a self-custodied, cross-margined account structure, allowing users to trade stock tokens and perpetuals from a single wallet. Infrastructure partners include Paxos Labs, which supplies the USDG stablecoin used for collateral, and Privy, which handles embedded wallet creation through email and Google logins.
These new markets rely on Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 network built on Arbitrum's technology stack that went live on July 1. Robinhood Crypto is a strategic investor in Arcus, linking the new trading venue directly to an established retail brokerage. The network launched with integrations from major crypto infrastructure firms including Uniswap, Chainlink, BitGo, and Alchemy.
The rapid adoption of the underlying network highlights a growing investor appetite for tokenized traditional assets. According to estimates by Bernstein, Robinhood Chain processed roughly $3.1 billion in decentralized exchange volume during its first week. This volume placed it among the top five blockchain networks globally for decentralized trading activity.
During that initial week, an estimated 65,000 users held $300 million in stablecoins and $13 million in tokenized stocks on the network. The Arcus rollout is currently available on desktop, with a mobile app in closed testing. For market professionals, the integration of traditional equities into a crypto-native settlement layer signals a structural shift in how retail participants access US markets.
