DENVER, COLORADO – Robinhood, a popular trading platform for stocks and crypto, announced Thursday at ETHDenver that it will allow users of its Robinhood Wallet to access swaps on Arbitrum, a layer-2 blockchain atop Ethereum.

Arbitrum's ARB token surged on the news, jumping more than 11% moments after the announcement.

According to a press release seen by CoinDesk, Robinhood Wallet users to transact with Arbitrum, and over the next few months, the two entities will be working “to support access to cross-chain swaps and other campaigns that lower the barriers to use Web3 on Robinhood Wallet.”

Arbitrum is an auxiliary layer-2 blockchain, also known as a rollup that processes transactions cheaper and faster than on the main Ethereum blockchain. Arbitrum leads the way in decentralized finance, or DeFi, total value locked (TVL) when it comes to layer 2s on Ethereum, with roughly $3.2 billion, according to DefiLlama.

“As DeFi continues to lead on Arbitrum, we'll now see one of the most recognizable trading platforms bring low-cost in-app swaps to a wide audience of traders,” said A.J. Warner, chief strategy officer at Offchain Labs, the primary developer firm behind the Arbitrum network, in the press release.

Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of Robinhood Crypto, said that "accessing and transacting on L2s has historically been difficult to non-crypto natives, but Robinhood Wallet now helps strip away the complexities to help onboard those new to Web3.”

UPDATE (Feb. 29, 2024, 18:43 UTC): Adds that ARB jumped on the news.

Robinhood Swaps Arbitrum layer 2 Arb

Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a small amount of ETH and other altcoins.