Robinhood Chain's gas pedal hits the brakes: daily transactions down 42% 📉

Activity on Robinhood's blockchain has cooled across trading and usage metrics even as more than $1 billion remains deposited in applications on the network and the brokerage continues paying certain transaction fees for customers. The chain averaged 6.2 million transactions a day during Oct. 2–8, down 42% from 10.8 million during Sept. 10–16, per CoinDesk calculations using growthepie data. Activity fell 20% from the preceding week alone. The number of active blockchain addresses also declined, averaging about 322,000 a day in the latest week, down 31% from mid-September.

Robinhood launched the chain in July to let users trade tokens, borrow and lend through applications connected to Ethereum, with plans for round-the-clock trading of tokens tied to stocks and funds. Every transaction pays a network fee, and the apps built on top charge their own fees for trades and loans. Robinhood keeps roughly nine-tenths of the network fees, according to a Bernstein note last month, a slice that shrinks as activity slows.

The decline marks a shift from September, when CoinDesk reported on Sept. 19 that fees had collapsed 97% while transactions were still near their highs and weekly trading volume was growing. Both have now turned lower. Spot exchanges on the network handled $7.45 billion during Oct. 2–8, down 21% from $9.46 billion the week before, per CoinDesk calculations using DefiLlama. Uniswap processed roughly 77% of that volume. Perpetual futures volume, by contrast, rose 26% week over week.

The drop in trading has not pulled balances off the network, with deposits in applications on Robinhood Chain remaining above $1 billion. Robinhood will continue covering network fees on token swaps worth more than 50 cents through Dec. 31 as it works to revive activity on a chain that opened four months ago.