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Robinhood Chain, the retail brokerage’s foray into blockchain infrastructure, has officially overtaken Polygon in total value locked. According to DefiLlama, Robinhood Chain’s TVL sits between $791M and $802M, nudging past Polygon’s $788M to $790M range. For a chain that didn’t exist before July, that’s a trajectory most networks would kill for.
Polygon, by contrast, has been building its ecosystem since 2020. Losing a TVL ranking to a newcomer that launched roughly two months ago is the kind of thing that makes you reassess what “first mover advantage” actually means in DeFi.
From zero to $800M in nine weeks
Robinhood Chain went live on July 1, 2026, as a permissionless Ethereum Layer 2 built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack. It uses ETH for gas and has no native token, which removes one of the more common friction points for new chain adoption.
Pre-launch TVL sat below $5M. Within a week, it crossed $100M. Three weeks in, it hit $431M. By late summer, it had cleared $700M and kept climbing.
Two protocols have done most of the heavy lifting. Morpho, a lending protocol, has consistently accounted for a dominant share of the chain’s TVL, often holding $300M or more in a single snapshot. Uniswap deployments make up much of the rest, giving the chain a lending-and-trading core that mirrors the activity profile of more mature networks.
Stablecoin supply on the chain tells an even bigger story. At roughly $868M to $872M, the stablecoin market cap on Robinhood Chain actually exceeds its DeFi TVL, suggesting significant capital is parked on the network beyond what’s actively deployed in protocols. Bridged TVL, which includes assets moved onto the chain but not necessarily locked in DeFi contracts, runs notably higher than the pure protocol figures.
Memecoins opened the door, utility tokens walked through it
The chain’s early days looked a lot like every other new L2 launch: memecoins everywhere. At certain points, memecoin trading accounted for more than 80% of DEX volume on the network. Peak daily DEX volumes sometimes exceeded $1B.
That composition has shifted noticeably. Trading activity has migrated toward utility-focused and infrastructure tokens.
Daily active users have regularly reached into the hundreds of thousands, putting Robinhood Chain in direct competition with established networks on engagement metrics. The chain has processed millions of transactions daily.
Context and caveats
Surpassing Polygon is a meaningful milestone, but it comes with important context. Polygon’s TVL has been declining from its peak levels for some time, making it a somewhat softer target than it would have been a year or two ago.
The broader competitive landscape still dwarfs both chains. Ethereum’s mainnet and Solana hold TVL figures that make $800M look like a rounding error.
The concentration of TVL in just a few protocols also raises questions about depth. When Morpho alone can account for a majority of a chain’s locked value, a single protocol experiencing outflows could dramatically reshape the numbers.
The Arbitrum Orbit architecture gives Robinhood Chain access to Ethereum’s security guarantees while offering lower transaction costs and higher throughput. The differentiator isn’t the tech stack. It’s the brand and the existing customer base sitting behind it.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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