‘1:1 backed equities scale much better,’ Base claims amid Robinhood rivalry

Jesse Pollak, creator and co-founder of Base, has acknowledged Robinhood Chain’s competitive edge but downplayed its threat in the tokenized stocks race.

In a recent statement, Pollak said,

One thing Robinhood Chain has done right is have tokenized equities in an EVM environment. We’ve been behind on this on Base, and I’m frustrated that’s the case.

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Robinhood was one of the major players to push U.S tokenized stocks in the European market despite opposition from several critics. The regret being mentioned by Pollak was a reference to their failed social bet instead of focusing on tokenization.

In fact, even Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong agreed that they missed the tokenization wave by putting so much effort into social experiments like creator coins. To correct their mistakes, Base has pivoted to trading, tokenization, payments, and AI agents.

Despite Base lagging, Pollak downplayed Robinhood Chain’s threat in the tokenized stocks race.

We’re close to fixing it with Coinbase, and when we do, we’ll have 1:1 backed equities (vs. Robinhood’s derivatives) that should scale much better from a trust, capital efficiency, and institutional acceptance.

Worth pointing out that most tokenized stocks are synthetics or derivatives that offer exposure to price performance and not voting rights.

Even Ondo’s tokenized offerings are 1:1 backed (meaning each tokenized is backed by actual stock or ETF). But there are no voting rights, and dividends are reinvested rather than shared directly.

It is unclear how Base’s tokenized stock offerings will be any different.

Robinhood Chain now rivals Base on key metrics

That said, Robinhood Chain is the latest Ethereum Layer 2 (L2), just about three weeks old since its debut this month. However, it leveraged memecoin mania to capture speculative attention to drive network effects for its tokenized stocks plan.

As of writing, the chain is already rivaling Base on key metrics. On user activity, both L2s now have weekly active users of about 1 million.

However, Robinhood Chain has seen much larger traction and DEX volume in the past few days. With the explosive traction, revenue has surged slightly above Base.

In other words, it took Robinhood Chain less than a month to challenge Base’s position as the third-largest chain for speculative trading.

And analysts think Robinhood’s distribution could give a massive advantage over Coinbase and Base. Robinhood is an equities broker first before expanding into crypto.

For Bernstein analysts, the distribution moat would also rally Robinhood’s stock, HOOD, to as high as $160. The broker has 27 million funded accounts and is ‘uniquely’ positioned to win as retail trading moves onchain, according to the analysts.

Final Summary

• Base’s co-founder, Pollak, envied Robinhood Chain’s early bet on tokenized assets
• Robinhood Chain now rivals Base across key metrics like DEX volume, users and revenue