Robinhood Tests Web3 Wallet With Polygon as First Blockchain

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  • Robinhood’s Web3 wal­let enters beta test­ing with 10,000 users
  • Poly­gon is cur­rent­ly the exclu­sive blockchain, but Robin­hood expects the prod­uct to be mul­ti­chain going forward

Trad­ing app Robin­hood has rolled out a new Web3 self-cus­tody wal­let for select iOS cus­tomers, the com­pa­ny announced Tuesday. 

Ten thou­sand Robin­hood users who joined the wait­list in May will be able to beta test the prod­uct, the com­pa­ny said. The new prod­uct, called Robin­hood Wal­let, will sup­port Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain as its first blockchain. 

“We chose Poly­gon due to its scal­a­bil­i­ty, speed, low net­work fees, and robust devel­op­er ecosys­tem to pro­vide one of the best trad­ing expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers,” Robin­hood wrote in a Tues­day blog post

Poly­gon also became the first Ethereum-com­pat­i­ble blockchain, after Ethereum itself, to be sup­port­ed by Coin­base for with­drawals and deposits of ether, Polygon’s native token MATIC, and the USDC sta­ble­coin, in June.

Robin­hood plans to even­tu­al­ly make its wal­let a mul­ti­chain prod­uct, the com­pa­ny added, and open the wal­let to more users.

Robinhood’s crypto ambitions

The news comes short­ly after Robin­hood announced a rough­ly 23% decrease in its staff after a round of lay­offs in August. At the time, the stock and cryp­to trad­ing plat­form said it esti­mates its total 2022 oper­at­ing expens­es to be rough­ly $1.7 bil­lion, a near­ly 10% decrease from the year prior. 

The head­count reduc­tion did not slow the company’s cryp­to expan­sion plans, but dete­ri­o­rat­ing mar­ket con­di­tions have damp­ened investor inter­est in dig­i­tal asset investments. 

In April, Robin­hood agreed to pur­chase UK-based cryp­to exchange Ziglu for $170 mil­lion, before reduc­ing its offer to $72.5 mil­lion in August. 

“The board has spent sig­nif­i­cant time in dis­cus­sion with Robinhood’s CEO and exec­u­tive team nego­ti­at­ing and improv­ing the terms of their revised offer,” Ziglu founder Mark Hip­per­son wrote in a let­ter to share­hold­ers at the time. “Based on these dis­cus­sions and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions, we believe the revised proposal…is the best and only rea­son­able path for­ward for the company.” 

Robin­hood, which has offered cryp­tocur­ren­cy trad­ing since 2018, first announced its Robin­hood Wal­let plans in May. As of the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022, Robin­hood cur­rent­ly has 14 mil­lion active month­ly users, a 1.9 mil­lion decrease from the quar­ter pri­or, accord­ing to its lat­est earn­ings report.

The plat­form did not reveal how many cus­tomers trade cryp­to, but it not­ed that cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tion-based rev­enue increased 7% from the first to sec­ond quarter. 

Co-founder and CEO of Robin­hood Vlad Tenev said the goal of the prod­uct was to sim­pli­fy the often “clunky” and “cum­ber­some” design fea­tured in decen­tral­ized finance, Web3 and 

non-cus­to­di­al wal­lets, dur­ing Blockwork’s Per­mis­sion­less event in West Palm Beach, Flori­da fol­low­ing the announcement. 

“There’s got to be a way to get all the secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy ben­e­fits of self cus­tody with the low-cost sim­plic­i­ty and mobile-first design that you’re accus­tomed to with Trad­Fi prod­ucts,” Tenev added. 

Robin­hood is still accept­ing users to the Wal­let wait­list, the com­pa­ny said on Twit­ter, but did not reveal when the pro­gram will become wide­ly available.


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  • Casey Wag­n­er

    Block­works

    Senior Reporter

    Casey Wag­n­er is a New York-based busi­ness jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing reg­u­la­tion, leg­is­la­tion, dig­i­tal asset invest­ment firms, mar­ket struc­ture, cen­tral banks and gov­ern­ments, and CBD­Cs. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, she report­ed on mar­kets at Bloomberg News. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia with a degree in Media Studies.

    Con­tact Casey via email at [email pro­tect­ed]



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