Johann Kerbrat on why Robinhood is building its own L2 on Ethereum At Consensus Hong Kong in February 2026, Robinhood launched a public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 built with Arbitrum. Following six months of private testing, Robinhood plans to launch the mainnet in 2026 and will migrate tokenized US stocks and ETFs currently offered to EU customers on Arbitrum One to its own dedicated Arbitrum-powered L2 that still settles on Ethereum. Coinbase has adopted a similar strategy with its plans to take full control over Base’s tech stack and advance the L2 toward Stage 2 decentralization. Robinhood Head of Crypto Johann Kerbrat explains the rationale behind building an L2: “We can still get the security and liquidity of Ethereum, benefit from all of the work that the Arbitrum team has done, and on top of that, customize [the chain] every time we want to build something.” He continues: “If we want to give people access to all of the tools and elements of traditional finance, we also need flexibility [to comply with] what regulators are asking us to do. A world where you have full privacy and you can do whatever you want without KYC and trade securities is still a bit far for us. But what we are trying to find is a good middle ground. You will be on a permissionless chain. You will be able to interact with DeFi and do a lot of things with your stock tokens. We think it’s a great compromise.” Galaxy Head of Research Alex Thorn points out that you can embed a lot of compliance controls at the application and token layers on top of Ethereum. Source: @glxyresearch (May 2026)

Türkiye's Ethereum ecosystem: where crisis meets innovation. 🇹🇷 - One of the highest crypto adoption rates globally - Lira devaluation → crypto as financial necessity - Government restrictions? Young, tech-savvy population didn't slow down - Grassroots ecosystem: web3 startups, university clubs, devs, academia → economic pressure meets passion for education, inclusion, global connectivity Full overview:

1/ Researchers, protocol teams, founders, students, local organizers, and globally distributed teams have all made Lisbon part of their home base. Today, we’re excited to announce that Lisbon is joining the Ethereum Community Hub network hosted at the @gnosis_ office

The Ethereum Security QF round is almost over. Less than 2 days left to discover and support the teams working behind the scenes to make Ethereum safer for everyone. 👇

DeFiScan has been rebranded and DeFiScan V2 is now live at The focus is not on polished scores (those will continue to evolve). The real product is the granular, on-chain data: explicit trust graphs that trace every permission, admin, dependency and oracle straight to user funds. So far we have 1,146 contracts tracked, and 154 admins detected on the $81B TVL we are continuously monitoring. Join our Telegram feed for continuous updates: The full methodology, pipeline and dataset are open source under MIT license: We built on @l2beat — the gold standard for continuous risk monitoring. Protocol builders, researchers, DeFi users, and institutions — the data is public. Feedback and contributions are welcome! Stay safe.

1/ We're thrilled to welcome @AztecFND as the latest project to take the 1% Pledge 🎉 1% of the AZTEC token supply has been deposited into Protocol Guild's 4-year vesting contract to support 187 Ethereum core contributors across client teams, research, and coordination

Ethereum is for shipping. Here are 22 things the Ethereum ecosystem launched, upgraded, and announced over the past month. 0/ Ethereum hit a new all-time high of 72.8 Million monthly transactions, the highest in network history. 1/ @ethereumfndn, @chainlink, and @Nethermind launched a $1M audit subsidy program to help Ethereum builders access high-quality security reviews. 2/ South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit, announced plans for GIWA Chain, an Ethereum L2 built on @Optimism. 3/ @AragonProject introduced Permissions Audits to help protocols secure roles, multisigs, and admin systems. 4/ @fileverse shipped Comments v2, improving the collaboration experience, with privacy by default. 5/ The Ethereum Applications Guild (@EthAppsGuild) launched to support Ethereum-native apps and real-world adoption. 6/ Privacy went live on @Optimism with confidential computing support on OP Mainnet. 7/ @StarkWareLtd brought native proof verification to Starknet mainnet with Shinobi, enabling private trading flows and OTC settlement. 8/ @worldcoin launched World ID 4.0, expanding proof of human credentials across apps, enterprises, and AI agents. 9/ Applications on Ethereum hit ~$310B in user deposits. 10/ @l2beat released a new interactive interoperability map showing how value moves across Ethereum’s expanding ecosystem. 11/ @AlchemixFi launched V3, the latest version of its self-repaying, non-liquidating loan product, with higher capital efficiency and improved peg mechanics. 12/ @OfficialMoonDAO raised $172k + from 157 contributors to send the man who coined the “overview effect” to space. 13/ @ethereumfndn announced the Road to @EFDevcon 8 Academic Program, supporting regional research and academic events ahead of Devcon. 14/ Ethereum core contributors gathered in Svalbard for Soldøgn Interop, a week-long event focused on hardening Glamsterdam implementations to help scale Ethereum securely. 15/ @basepaint_xyz hit 1,000 straight days of onchain art creation, with 121M+ pixels painted and $1.5M + distributed to 4,000+ artists. 16/ New Ethereum community hubs launched in Hong Kong and Floripa, growing local coordination and ecosystem activity across Asia and Latin America. 17/ The EF’s ETH Rangers public goods security program wrapped after helping recover or freeze $5.8M, reporting 785+ vulnerabilities, and identifying ~100 North Korean IT workers targeting Web3 teams. 18/ @centrifuge launched a tokenized S&P 500 fund on @base, bringing 24/7 onchain index exposure to non-U.S. users. 19/ @0xcatalysis launched Covered Vaults on Ethereum, DeFi vaults with built-in onchain risk coverage backed by delegated capital. 20/ @Uniswap processed $3T in all-time volume on Ethereum mainnet. 21/ @RAILGUN_Project hit $5 billion of total all time private volume.

"We are able to extend the @ethereum through a real-time proving and synchronously composable rollup framework." @VitalikButerin interviewed with @jbaylina about the technical primitives of the @etheconomiczone at @EthPrague, diving deep into solving the L2 fragmentation problem through real-time proving and synchronous composability.

The model is no longer just ours. @Gitcoin is deploying $1M into an @OctantApp v2 vault. Octant is matching with another $1M. Together, that capital generates ongoing yield routed to the funding rounds Gitcoin governance chooses, while principal stays intact. We built v2 so other treasuries could fund Ethereum public goods through Octant. This is what that looks like in practice. From one-off rounds to ongoing funding infrastructure. Yield in, impact out.

fxUSD supply just crossed $40M. No t-bills. No bank deposits. No opaque boxes. Nothing to trust. Just ETH and BTC, onchain, backing every dollar. This is what decentralized stables look like.

Liquity is built on Ethereum. @LiquityProtocol lets users mint BOLD, a decentralized stablecoin, by borrowing against ETH or LST collateral. It is a governance-minimized, immutable, and permissionless borrowing protocol.

We often get asked about grant opportunities, so we decided to round-up a few cool funding programs: @ethereum Security Subsidy Program: A 1 Million USD initiative designed to lower barriers for Ethereum mainnet projects seeking security audits from high-quality, pre-vetted auditors. 📆 Deadline: 14th of each month, 23:59 UTC @Optimism Foundation Growth Grants: funding incentives that grow and activate DEX liquidity for collateral–borrow asset pairs used in lending. 📆 Deadline: 20 May 2026, 3:00 UTC @spark_sciences Fund for Radical Researchers: Micro-grants for scientific innovation and a bridge for new creators to enter the DeSci ecosystem with confidence. Live on @Artizen 📆 Deadline: 30 June 2026, 23:59 UTC and finally, the @ethereum Security QF Round on 500 ETH (~$1M+) in matching funds from @thedaofund to support the people and projects securing Ethereum and its L2s. Live on @Giveth 📆 Deadline: 14 May 2026 (links are in the reply for each program)