Author: Blockchain Knight; Source: X, @Knight_in_Block

This year the crypto market has taken two diametrically opposed expansion paths. Robinhood, a brokerage with stocks as its core business, has finally deployed its public chain and relied on Meme to quickly rise to the forefront of trading activity.

The top crypto exchanges have collectively turned to tokenized stocks and RWA assets, and in turn have become distribution channels for Wall Street assets.

Although both parties come from different starting points,they are actually competing for the trading entrance of next-generation assets.

Robinhood Chain has been online for less than two weeks, and its growth rate far exceeds market expectations.

DeFiLlama data shows that itscumulative DEX trading volume has exceeded US$3.98 billion, ranking second only to Solana in single-day trading volume on the entire network.

In the Ethereum L2 track, the number of transactions in a single day reached 10.4 million, surpassing Base, which has been online longer.

It is worth noting that users mainly focus on the incremental market. The number of active addresses has increased several times within a week, and new addresses account for more than 45%. This is not a case of existing users brushing up the volume.

Of course. What supports this popularity is not the official RWA narrative, but Meme speculation. Most of the time, Meme contributes nearly 50% of the transaction volume of the entire chain.

However, the risks behind the prosperity are also exposed. A large number of honeypot tokens that disappear after being bought appear on the cross-chain platform Relay warning chain. Malicious contracts bypass security checks and directly transfer user funds. At the same time, multiple projects have associated address cluster control, so we need to stay vigilant.

More importantly, the current market value of active real-world assets across the entire chain is only about US$12.5 million, and the implementation of real-world assets cannot keep up with the popularity of speculation.

On the other hand, crypto exchanges are collectively "de-encrypting", and tokenized assets have become the new main force of growth.

CryptoRank data shows that tokenized assets accounted for nearly one-fifth of the exchange’s newly listed assets in the first half of 2026, while they accounted for less than 7% in 2025. During the same period, the overall new volume declined for two consecutive quarters.

If you look at the trading volume, the benefits of entering this track are already visible to the naked eye. For exchanges, the user acceptance of linking to traditional assets is quite high.

The trading volume of CEX real asset perpetual futures in June reached US$311 billion, a month-on-month increase of 57% and a record high. The size of the global tokenized stock market has grown by more than 470% in the past year, with monthly on-chain transfers reaching US$8.4 billion.

However, these products generally have inherent shortcomings. Most of them are synthetic derivatives or debt certificates. Users do not enjoy real shareholder rights and are subject to regulatory restrictions. They are basically not open to old and American users, which means that it is difficult to enter the core market. But think about it conversely, why do American retail investors use encryption channels?

In the short term, the asset-light model of CEX is running faster, and the volume of derivatives has formed a scale advantage. However, in the longer term, licensed brokers such as Robinhood may have greater stamina.

The core of financial business is asset authenticity and compliance. Robinhood has complete brokerage qualifications, and its RWA assets have real underlying support. Once the securities account and public chain wallet are connected, the experience cannot be replicated by exchanges.

Although both parties are currently expanding in their respective comfort zones, Robinhood has played a very good leading role. If other brokers follow suit, the story will be interesting. Maybe we will eventually see another dimension of competition. I wonder what the CEX bosses think.