Arcus, a decentralized exchange (DEX) developed by a team with deep roots in dYdX Labs, launched on Robinhood Chain in July 2026 with more than 95 tokenized representations of US stocks, ETFs, commodities, and indices.

The platform runs on Robinhood Chain, a public blockchain that launched its mainnet on July 1 and is built on Arbitrum Orbit, a framework for creating Ethereum Layer 2 networks. Arcus charges zero fees on spot trades and has simultaneously opened a waitlist for a beta perpetuals product offering up to 50x leverage across crypto, equity, commodity, and index markets.

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What Arcus Actually Offers

The stock tokens listed on Arcus are not equity shares. They are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, a Jersey-registered entity. Holders gain economic exposure to the price of underlying assets but receive no shareholder rights, voting rights, or direct legal ownership in the companies involved. This is a structural detail that matters, particularly for retail users in markets where such distinctions are not always clearly communicated.

The perpetuals product uses USDG as collateral. USDG is the first stablecoin natively issued on Robinhood Chain, which helps explain why it was selected as the collateral of choice for the perpetuals product. It is issued by Paxos Digital Singapore under supervision from Singapore's Monetary Authority, and by Paxos Issuance Europe under the European Union's MiCA framework. Its market capitalization sits at roughly $2.7 to $3.0 billion as of mid-2026, with more than 130 enterprise partners including Kraken, OKX, Galaxy Digital, and Mastercard, among others.

Perpetuals waitlist access is prioritized for users with prior on-chain trading history on dYdX, Hyperliquid, or Lighter, and for users with existing real-world asset (RWA) trading volume.

Robinhood Crypto made an undisclosed equity investment in Arcus as part of the partnership.

The original dYdX blockchain, which remains community-owned, is not affected by the rebrand or the new product.

"Arcus is the exchange we've always wished existed," said Eddie Zhang, Founder and CEO of Arcus. "One that serves pro traders and institutions, while opening the door for the millions of retail traders who were never supposed to get in."

Seong Seog Lee, Senior Director at Robinhood Crypto, framed the product as an extension of the company's original retail access mission. "Robinhood has always believed the financial system should work for everyone. Arcus is the natural extension of that mission into the onchain world."

Johann Kerbrat, SVP and GM at Robinhood, offered a broader view: "Decentralized finance unlocks possibilities beyond what traditional finance can offer."

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Chain Metrics and Market Context

Robinhood Chain has accumulated between $256 million and $400 million in total value locked (TVL) in its first three weeks, with Morpho, a lending protocol, accounting for roughly $133 million of that. The range reflects rapidly shifting figures captured at different moments across analytics platforms. It is also worth noting that not all of this on-chain activity is driven by the RWA and stock token use cases the chain was architected to support. A memecoin called CASHCAT recorded single-day gains of 700 to 1,700 percent during the chain's early weeks, and speculative activity of this kind has at times outpaced the structured-asset trading the platform was built around.

Stablecoin supply on the chain stands between $300 million and $396 million, with USDG representing approximately 65 to 70 percent of that figure. Cumulative DEX volume has ranged from $800 million to over $4 billion depending on the measurement window. That spread reflects the difference between short-term and longer cumulative counting periods across data providers rather than inconsistency in the underlying data. The network has processed more than 52 million transactions to date.

The broader tokenized equity market reached approximately $700 million in December 2025, up from under $30 million at the start of that year. As of mid-2026, global tokenized stock holdings exceed $1 billion, with cumulative trading volume surpassing $20 billion. Citigroup projects the tokenized securities market could reach $4 to $5 trillion by 2030. Current leaders in the space, Ondo Global Markets and Kraken's xStocks, control roughly 80 percent of market share. Both operate under US Regulation S, a legal framework that permits certain securities offerings to non-US investors without SEC registration but structurally excludes US investors from participation. That constraint leaves the global retail market meaningfully open to new entrants such as Arcus.

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What This Means for South Asia and Africa

Arcus lists availability in 120 or more countries. The published restricted list names the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other restricted jurisdictions, meaning the exclusion list is not exhaustive. Users in countries not explicitly named should verify their own regulatory status before trading.

India, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Ghana are not explicitly excluded.

Southeast Asia accounts for 26.2 percent of active tokenized asset traders globally in 2026, making it the largest single regional bloc. South Asia accounts for about 20.5 percent, and the Middle East and Africa together represent 18.4 percent.

For users in these regions, Arcus offers access to US market exposure 24/7, without requiring a foreign brokerage account, minimum balance, or market-hours constraint.

The barriers are real, however. USDG is pegged to the US dollar, which creates embedded currency risk for users in economies with significant depreciation pressure. Nigeria's naira has lost more than 70 percent of its value in recent years, and the Pakistani rupee remains under sustained strain.

Local regulations also matter independently of Arcus's own access policies. India's SEBI has not issued formal guidance on foreign tokenized equity products. Nigeria's 2025 Investment and Securities Act classifies digital assets as securities, a designation that could complicate or enable access depending on enforcement approach. Kenya, though not explicitly excluded from Arcus's platform, is currently in a regulatory consolidation period running through 2026 to 2028, leaving the framework for foreign tokenized equity products similarly unsettled there. Beyond regulation, rural internet penetration across Sub-Saharan Africa stood at only 24 percent as of 2025, a structural barrier that limits on-chain access regardless of what any platform's access policy permits. Users in these regions also face secondary liquidity risk: if institutional market-makers pull back during periods of volatility, markets for tokenized assets could thin considerably, leaving retail holders in countries without alternative exit venues with limited options.

Developers in both regions have a concrete opportunity. Robinhood Chain's documentation confirms that third parties can build lending markets using stock tokens as collateral. Given India's established DeFi developer base and Sub-Saharan Africa's scale of mobile money activity (the region processes approximately 1 billion mobile money transactions annually), there is genuine builder potential in localized on-ramps, yield products denominated in USDG, and hybrid lending tools.

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What Comes Next

Arcus has listed pre-IPO markets as a forthcoming feature.

Hyperliquid, the current benchmark for on-chain perpetuals, saw its native token gain nearly 150 percent year-to-date in 2026, setting a high bar for any new entrant.

Whether Arcus converts its engineering pedigree and Robinhood's distribution into sustained trading volume will depend on how quickly its perpetuals product exits beta, how institutional market-makers perform during volatility, and whether the platform makes deliberate efforts to engage regulators in key emerging markets rather than relying solely on Regulation S exemptions. That reliance has allowed competitors to scale globally while remaining structurally closed to US investors. Arcus enters the same legal landscape and will face the same choices about how actively it pursues regulatory relationships beyond what the exemption alone provides.