Dialogue with Robinhood Senior Vice President Johann: Avoiding competition in public chains, laying out the next generation of finance from DeFi to AI Agent

Interview: Tong, PANews

Compiled by: Nancy, PANews

No one expected that Robinhood Chain, with its traditional financial genes, could become a dark horse in the L2 track in such a short time, even surpassing many competitors. However, with the recent decline in market enthusiasm, this emerging public chain is also beginning to face liquidity challenges, especially as the Meme coin sector has noticeably cooled down, raising concerns about whether the on-chain ecosystem can continue to grow.

At the same time, at the recently held HOOD Summit 2026, Robinhood announced multiple new products all at once, covering areas such as AI, perpetual contracts, and weekend trading, further signaling its intention to expand the boundaries of its crypto business.

During the TOKEN2049 Singapore conference, PANews interviewed Johann Kerbrat, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Crypto Business at Robinhood, discussing the strategic positioning of Robinhood Chain, market competition, international market expansion, and the integration of AI with the crypto industry.

In his view, Robinhood Chain is not just an independent blockchain but an important infrastructure for Robinhood's future financial services, allowing users to enjoy the advantages of DeFi through centralized applications. Rather than competing for market share among public chains, Robinhood hopes to leverage blockchain to reduce the cost of financial services, promote asset tokenization, and attract more traditional financial users into the crypto world. As AI Agents gradually acquire capabilities such as trade execution, wallet operations, and portfolio management, blockchain is also expected to become an important underlying facility for automated financial activities.

The following is the interview content:

Integrating Crypto into Daily Life, Expanding Global Markets through Blockchain

PANews: Johann, thank you very much for accepting our interview today. We are glad to have you here. Today, we will focus on Robinhood Crypto, Robinhood Chain, and your vision for the global financial market. Let's start with the first question.

Johann Kerbrat: I'm happy to be here.

PANews: Before joining Robinhood, you had been deeply involved in the crypto industry for many years, even working as a Bitcoin miner. What initially attracted you to this industry? Which early experiences still influence the way you build products today?

Johann Kerbrat: For me personally, the idea of decentralization is very appealing. I believe that people's financial activities, as well as the ways they buy and transfer assets, should not be controlled by a single entity. This is what attracts me most about crypto technology.

However, I also found that for a long time, crypto products were primarily built by technicians for technicians, which led to many users being excluded; they needed a lower barrier to entry.

When I joined Robinhood, I was very excited about making crypto technology more accessible so that people could truly use it in their daily lives.

PANews: Currently, you are responsible for both Robinhood's crypto business and international business. How do these two parts collaborate in daily operations? Are there differences in their priorities?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe that leveraging blockchain technology is an important way for us to expand into international markets. For example, tokenized stocks are a great entry point that can help us reach more users. Robinhood has launched stock tokens in over 120 countries and regions, allowing users to access these assets through Robinhood Wallet and other wallets that connect to Robinhood Chain. I think this is one of the significant advancements we have made in international expansion.

Our user base is inherently global, so we do not focus solely on the U.S. market. Subsequently, we have expanded our business to more regions, including launching crypto and brokerage services in the UK, conducting crypto business in the EU, and planning further expansion into markets like Singapore. This requires a lot of work, but we are excited to continue expanding our product coverage.

Bringing DeFi to Mainstream Users, Robinhood Chain as a New Financial Infrastructure

PANews: Now, Robinhood Chain seems to have become the core of Robinhood's crypto business. What is your strategic positioning for this chain? Is it just a product within a broader crypto and international business strategy, or is it the center of the entire strategy?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe that the significance of Robinhood Chain goes far beyond that. It will become the underlying infrastructure for many new financial services, allowing us to bring the advantages of DeFi to customers who use financial services through centralized applications.

A great example is the Robinhood Earn product, which can provide users with about 7% returns on their cash. Specifically, we convert users' cash into stablecoins, create smart wallets, and then deposit the funds into a lending protocol on the platform.

We believe it is very important to merge the two worlds. Because blockchain can bring a lot of innovation and achieve 24/7 instant settlement. By adopting a more modern, blockchain-based technology architecture, we can also significantly reduce costs for customers.

In the future, you will see more and more such services appearing on the Robinhood platform. As long as blockchain can create value for customers, we will consider integrating it.

PANews: After the launch of Robinhood Chain, its popularity has been increasing, and it has attracted considerable attention in the Chinese community. Are there any community data or user behaviors that have surprised you?

Johann Kerbrat: What makes us happy is that the community is actively building various applications on this chain. Our goal is not just to launch our own products but to create an ecosystem that allows developers to freely build and develop new applications.

We have also positioned stock tokens as a foundational component, allowing developers to innovate based on them and create new types of applications that we hadn't even thought of before.

This is also one of the most interesting parts of the entire process. Every morning, I check my X (Twitter) account to see what new projects have been deployed on this chain. We see community members from different regions actively participating and have encountered many people who proactively communicate with me about Robinhood Chain. Seeing this momentum, we feel very excited.

Expanding Crypto Users is the Top Priority, Not Pursuing Independent Development for Now

PANews: However, recent on-chain activities seem to have cooled down, especially activities related to Meme coins. What measures will you take in the future to attract developers and users to continue building on this chain?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe we are still in a very early stage. In a few days, this chain will have been online for 100 days (note: at the time of publication, it has been 100 days), so the entire journey has just begun.

Currently, we have not completed all planned integrations. For example, we plan to further connect Robinhood's main application, which has about 27.9 million funded accounts. Additionally, there are many products being developed on Robinhood Wallet, which is the main wallet for Robinhood Chain. At the same time, we are also negotiating partnerships with different service providers.

Therefore, we believe we are still in a very early stage, and there is much to be done in the future. We are not overly concerned about daily trading volume fluctuations but are more focused on the development over the next five or ten years: how Robinhood Chain can gradually become the underlying infrastructure for many of our financial systems.

PANews: I am curious, which blockchains do you see as competitors to Robinhood Chain? For example, Solana, BNB Chain, Base, or do you hope to develop it into a relatively independent ecosystem?

Johann Kerbrat: To be honest, we do not pay much attention to market share competition among different blockchains.

I believe that the number of people truly using blockchain technology still represents a very small portion of the global population. Therefore, we are more focused on how to bring more users into the blockchain world and start using tokenized assets, rather than competing for market share with other blockchains like Base.

In the long run, we believe that users will increasingly use blockchain because different blockchains may specialize in specific areas of financial services. What the entire industry needs to do is ensure that users can easily switch between different blockchains. This is also why Robinhood Wallet does not only support Robinhood Chain; it also supports many other blockchains you just mentioned.

Overall, we hope to have more users using our services.

PANews: Robinhood Chain is currently deployed in the Arbitrum ecosystem. In the future, will you consider making it more independent?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe we can always choose to become more independent, but it mainly depends on how we allocate resources.

Currently, we are more interested in introducing new foundational components to the blockchain, such as the stock tokens mentioned earlier, and driving industry innovation through them.

In terms of blockchain technology, we are quite satisfied with the current performance. One of our goals is to achieve very low latency, such as sub-microsecond block times. Such performance metrics are very important for building a truly effective financial system.

However, we do not believe we need to invest resources now to build decentralized and secure mechanisms from scratch because we can benefit from Ethereum Layer 1 and the technology stack built by Arbitrum Stack. I think this is a great way: we can focus on what we do best, which is building new financial systems, while leveraging the advantages of existing blockchain architectures.

Blockchains themselves are permissionless. If in the future we want to become more independent, we can certainly do so. But for now, our product roadmap is already full, and there are many new products that need our energy to develop.

Bringing New Users to Blockchain, Robinhood Accelerates Multi-Line Crypto Layout

PANews: How much of the crypto activity on Robinhood Chain comes from Robinhood's existing traditional financial users, and how much comes from native crypto users?

Johann Kerbrat: This question is difficult to answer accurately because we do not specifically track the sources of these on-chain activities, nor do we determine whether each activity is associated with a specific customer.

However, I expect that we can still see a considerable number of native crypto users participating in transactions, such as some Meme coins launched on the trading platform. As for the Earn product, it is open to all customers on our platform.

Therefore, we do see many new users starting to engage with blockchain, some of whom may be encountering blockchain technology for the first time. I think this is one of the most exciting things happening right now.

PANews: In other words, you are bringing a lot of new users to blockchain. Looking ahead to the next quarter and the coming year, what will be the next major growth focus for Robinhood Crypto? Is it U.S. perpetual contracts, tokenized assets, Robinhood Chain, or international market expansion?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe all of these directions will be our focus. We just launched the U.S. perpetual contract product last week and are gradually opening it up to more customers, which we are very excited about. This product uses the backend of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp (under Robinhood). We believe that the integration of global liquidity is crucial for creating excellent perpetual contract products.

As for tokenized assets, as I just mentioned, we have just started. Currently, we have launched tokens for 190 U.S. stocks and ETFs, but we hope to expand the range of assets to more types in the future. This includes not only U.S. assets but also assets from other global exchanges, as well as private equity and other assets.

In terms of international expansion, we are also actively advancing. Recently, we just launched cryptocurrency trading services in Canada.

We believe there are many more products and services that can be gradually brought to the platform in the future.

AI Agent and Cryptocurrency Technology Integration, Automated Finance Will Welcome More Opportunities

PANews: At the end of September, at the HOOD Summit, Robinhood announced the launch of several new products, including the AI Agent. How do you think AI will impact the future of the cryptocurrency industry?

Johann Kerbrat: I believe there are many intersections between AI and cryptocurrency technology. Creating wallets through software, transferring assets, and buying and selling various assets are all operations that are very suitable for automated execution, and AI Agents excel at performing these tasks.

We are ensuring that the various Agent systems we launch can be compatible with different types of trading, such as stocks, options, and cryptocurrency assets. We are also providing various skills and tool support for blockchain, allowing AI Agents to easily interact with the blockchain.

I think there is still a lot of space to explore in this direction. As the world increasingly moves towards a 24/7 digital financial system, having AI Agents continuously monitor investment portfolios and investment conditions on behalf of users will become increasingly important.

Looking Forward to Hearing from the Chinese Community, Welcome Community Participation in Co-Building

PANews: For the Chinese community, if they want to participate in Robinhood Chain, what would you like to say to them, or do you have any suggestions?

Johann Kerbrat: We very much hope to hear the voices of the Chinese community.

We are building more tools and have been communicating with customers to understand which features are working well, where there are still shortcomings, and what users want to see on this chain.

So, please actively provide us with feedback, clearly tell us what is currently lacking, what else is worth developing, and which directions we should focus on next. We hope this chain can become easier to use and better serve different communities.

PANews: There are many developers in China. I'm not sure if you have already established contact with the developer community in China?

Johann Kerbrat: There are definitely some developers involved, although I have not specifically confirmed the details. But we do hope this chain can be open to all developers and communities, allowing anyone to build applications on it.