Robinhood (HOOD.US) self-built chain contributed $26 million in the first quarter, and revenue from traditional crypto transactions shrank

According to Woofun AI, the third-quarter earnings report released by Robinhood (HOOD.US) on October 27 revealed a drastic restructuring of its crypto business structure: self-built chains contributed $26 million in revenue in the first quarter, while traditional crypto transaction revenue was shrinking, marking a substantial shift in the growth engine.

Since launching on the mainnet on July 1, Robinhood Chain has shown remarkable monetization efficiency in its first full quarter. This Arbitrum-based L2 chain processed over $100 billion in DEX transactions and generated more than $50 million in on-chain fees, of which $26 million was directly included in the company's crypto revenue.

Notably, this highly volatile activity is highly concentrated: the 12-day frenzy from August 30 to September 10 contributed 74% of the full quarter's processing fees. The daily transaction volume during this period once exceeded 1.5 billion US dollars, and single-day fees once surpassed the Ethereum main network and Base, entering the front line of the entire network. The core driving this phenomenon is not RWA or tokenized stocks conceived by CEO Vlad Tenev, but memes. Less than 3 weeks after launch, its daily active address surpassed Coinbase (COIN.US) Base, and more than 80% of DEX trading volume was meme coin speculation.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, although there is about 50% of the $50 million processing fee (net revenue of about $25 million after splitting with Arbitrum, confirmed revenue of $26 million, annualized revenue of about $100 million), this is already a considerable increase for a new chain that has only been running for 3 months. In contrast, after excluding the contribution of this chain, traditional crypto transaction revenue fell 6% month-on-month to $94 million, and total crypto revenue was still 55% lower than the same period last year, highlighting the fatigue of the old model.

The plight of the traditional crypto trading business is in stark contrast to predicting the explosion of the market. Although Q3 trading volume increased from $40 billion to $50 billion in Q2, crypto trading revenue plummeted 55% year over year, accounting for 8.4% of the company's total revenue, reflecting the continued decline in the monetization efficiency of a single transaction under competition from Coinbase, various DEXs, and brokers.

Meanwhile, event contracts (forecasting markets) became a real growth engine, with Q3 revenue reaching $173 million, up more than 6 times year over year, up 11% month-on-month, and surpassing crypto trading revenue for two consecutive quarters. Currently, Robinhood has 14 business lines with annualized revenue exceeding $100 million, and the three new ones that crossed the $100 million annualized threshold in 2026 are Rothera (self-built forecasting market exchange), credit cards, and Robinhood Legend (advanced trading platform).

This shift shows that the growth narrative of being the “beneficiary of the crypto bull market” two years ago has come to an end, and now predictive markets and options are the biggest source of transaction revenue, while crypto trading accounts for only 8%.

Overall financial performance showed the characteristics of “revenue growth without profit growth”. Total Q3 revenue of US$1.42 billion reached a record high of US$1.42 billion, up 12% year on year, but net profit of US$476 million fell 14% year on year. After dilution, EPS of $0.51 fell 16% year over year, lower than market expectations of $0.55. The expansion of operating expenses is eroding profit margins, stemming from investment in the past two years to feverishly set up new business lines, including self-built chains, the acquisition of Bitstamp and WonderFi, the launch of the loan product Robinhood Earn, and the acquisition of a predictive market license. CFO Shiv Verma emphasized that net deposits in October had surpassed $13 billion (of which the Dell family injected $6 billion into Trump Accounts), and the number of Gold members reached a record 5.2 million.

However, the market is clearly wary of slowing profits. Robinhood Chain's GAAP revenue of $26 million marks a shift from a transaction commission model to a chain infrastructure fee sharing model. This is in line with the logic of Coinbase's promotion of the Base Chain, but the difference is that Robinhood Chain generated measurable explicit revenue in the first quarter of its launch. The key question is that most of the revenue on the Q3 chain came from a 12-day meme coin frenzy. Whether this explosive activity continues will determine whether Robinhood Chain is a true revenue engine or a highly volatile cyclical add-on.