Network news
ROBINHOOD REJECTS BLOCKCHAIN: Robinhood debuted the public testnet for its Ethereum layer-2 blockchain with plans for wider introduction later this year as the brokerage app aims to move more trading activity on-chain. The new network, called Robinhood Chain, is built on Arbitrum and is designed to support real-world tokenized assets, including stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Developers will be able to publicly build on the network for the first time after six months of private testing ahead of a future mainnet launch, the company announced at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference. With the chain, Robinhood aims to allow users to trade 24/7 and manage their assets themselves in Robinhood’s own crypto wallet. Users will also be able to bridge across different chains and into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on Ethereum, the company said. The timing comes as Ethereum’s core plan shifts more attention back to the base layer. Certain upgrades have already lowered transaction costs, and further improvements are expected to continue to ease congestion, a development that weakens the case for Layer 2s as a pure scaling necessity. Robinhood’s approach suggests it is already operating under this assumption. “I think, Vitalik [Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum] was always pretty clear about this, that L2s weren’t just here to scale Ethereum,” Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto, said in an interview. “For us, it was never really about scaling Ethereum or making faster transactions.” — Margaux Nijkerk and Krisztian Sandor Read more.
CITADEL BACKS THE LAYERZERO BLOCKCHAIN: LayerZero Labs unveiled Zero, a blockchain aimed at powering institutional financial markets, along with a strategic investment from Citadel Securities in ZRO, the network’s native token and governance asset. ARK Invest is also investing in LayerZero’s equity and ZRO token, with CEO Cathie Wood joining a newly formed advisory board alongside ICE director Michael Blaugrund and former BNY Mellon head of digital assets Caroline Butler, the company said. The size of the investments was not disclosed. The announcement signals a deeper push by traditional market infrastructure companies into blockchain-based trading, clearing and settlement, as scalability and performance constraints have long limited real-world application. Tether Investments, the investment arm of the largest stablecoin issuer, also made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs, it said. Citadel Securities said it is working with LayerZero to evaluate how Zero’s architecture can support high-throughput workflows across trade and post-trade processes. The firm’s investment in ZRO adds to growing institutional interest in LayerZero, which is best known for running one of crypto’s largest interoperability networks. Zero is designed around LayerZero’s first-of-its-kind heterogeneous architecture, which uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to separate transaction execution from verification. The company claims the design can scale to about 2 million transactions per second across multiple zones, with transaction costs approaching a millionth of a dollar and virtually unlimited block space. — Will Canny Read more.
MEGAETH MAINNET GOES LIVE: MegaETH, a high-performance blockchain built to make Ethereum applications feel near-instantaneous, debuted on its public mainnet, entering an ecosystem mired in a fundamental debate about how Ethereum should scale. The project, which had pitched itself as a layer-2 “real-time blockchain” targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second (tps), would make onchain interactions feel closer to traditional web apps than today’s crypto networks. Ethereum operates at less than 30 tps, according to Token Terminal. The publication covers a rapid rise that has attracted both technical curiosity and great financial support. The project’s development arm, MegaLabs, raised a $20 million seed round in 2024 led by Dragonfly. Last October, it announced a $450 million oversubscribed token sale, backed by some of the most recognizable names in crypto, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin. The sale was one of the largest crypto fundraisers of that year. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
ENS SCRAPS LAYER-2 PLANS: ENS decided not to move forward with Namechain, a planned layer-2 rollup that marks another high-profile shift away from the once-dominant narrative that Ethereum’s future would be primarily built on L2s. Instead of its own rollup, ENS will now deploy the long-awaited ENSv2 upgrade exclusively on the Ethereum network, citing dramatically lower gas costs and a broader change in Ethereum’s scaling philosophy. According to ENS founder and lead developer Nick Johnson, the original rationale for launching a custom rollup no longer holds. “The landscape has changed between when we first decided to pursue an L2,” Johnson said in an interview with CoinDesk. Two years ago, high gas prices made rollups the “official lane,” but Ethereum’s base layer has since scaled to the point where transaction costs are sustainable. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
In other news
- Kraken fired its chief financial officer, Stephanie Lemmerman, just as the crypto exchange was preparing to go public in the US earlier this year, according to two people familiar with the matter. Lemmerman joined Kraken from Dapper Labs in November 2024 and was the exchange’s CFO for one year and four months. She now has a strategic advisory role at Kraken, one of the people said. Robert Moore, former VP of business expansion, has largely taken over her job, the person said. An updated executive page on the website of Kraken’s parent company, Payward Inc., lists Moore as deputy CFO. Lemmerman does not appear. Clearly, it matters that Kraken removed its CFO after filing a confidential filing with US regulators in November. That came just days after Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation, including $200 million from Citadel Securities. — Ian Allison Read more.
- Jump Trading plans to take a small stake in each of prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The trading power center, which has a significant focus on cryptocurrency, will win the stake in exchange for providing liquidity on the two platforms. Jump is set to take a fixed amount of equity in Kalshi, while its stake in Polymarket will grow over time depending on the trading capacity the firm brings to the platform’s US operation. Jump expanded into predictive markets trading in recent months, recruiting 20 employees for that business, according to Bloomberg. — Jamie Crawley Read more.
Legislation and policy
- President Donald Trump’s US bitcoin reserve does not yet exist, and there is no mechanism within the federal government for wholesale purchases of crypto. Keep that in mind as you consider this weekend’s speculation about the price point that would prompt the White House to hit a buy button, thanks in large part to CNBC’s Jim Cramer. There is no such button. The president ordered a “strategic reserve” created to hold bitcoin, but that didn’t make it exist. The Treasury Department and crypto advisers spent months auditing federal holdings of crypto (although White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt told CoinDesk last week they still won’t share a number). But the process hit a snag: Advocates said they need Congress to establish the repository under the law. The crypto sector’s new US law for stablecoin issuers did not include it, and neither does the comprehensive Crypto Market Structure Act currently making its way through the US Senate. Clearing legislation through this Congress — even less controversial issues — is a tall order, and industry lobbyists are focused on the bill to finally establish market and oversight rules for digital assets. A reserve might not even be second on the priority list because crypto tax rules also beckon. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
- Cryptocurrency exchange and wallet provider Blockchain.com won regulatory approval in the UK nearly four years after seemingly giving up. Blockchain.com was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) register of licensed crypto companies on Tuesday under its trading name “BC Operations.” The London-based company chose to withdraw its application for an FCA license in March 2022, after failing to win approval ahead of an impending deadline. Blockchain.com pivoted to its registered company in Lithuania. Registration in the UK allows Blockchain.com to carry out certain crypto-related activities in the UK, provided it complies with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism regulations. — Jamie Crawley Read more.
Calendar
- 10.-12. February 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
- 17.-21. February 2026: EthDenver, Denver
- 23.-24. February 2026: NearCon, San Francisco
- 24.-26. March 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
- March 30-Apr. 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
- 15-16 Apr. 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
- 29.-30. April 2026: Token2049, Dubai
- 5.-7. May 2026: Consensus, Miami
- September 29-1. October 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- 7.-8. October 2026: Token2049, Singapore
- 3.-6. November 2026: Devcon, Mumbai
- 15.-17. November 2026: Solana Breakpoint, London
