Robinhood & Lighter: Why Wall Street Is Moving Onchain
Robinhood and Lighter executives discuss how traditional finance is converging with on-chain markets through technological maturity, regulatory clarity, and products like perpetual futures and stock tokens. They highlight the advantages of 24/7 trading, capital efficiency, and composable financial primitives enabled by blockchain infrastructure.
Summary
At the Digital Asset Summit Asia in Singapore, Johan (head of crypto at Robinhood) and Vlad (founder/CEO of Lighter) discussed the convergence of traditional finance and on-chain markets. Both executives identified three key unlocks enabling this shift: industry maturation and institutional understanding of blockchain technology, technological improvements allowing low-latency on-chain finance while maintaining security, and improved regulatory clarity from the CFTC and SEC.
A major advantage driving adoption is 24/7 market access. Robinhood's stock tokens show over 70% of trading volume occurring outside exchange hours (weekends and overnight), demonstrating global demand beyond traditional market hours. Lighter and Robinhood are addressing liquidity challenges in extended hours through hybrid approaches combining order books with automated market makers (AMMs), allowing fallback liquidity provision when market makers step back.
Perpetual futures emerged as a key derivative form factor gaining mainstream traction. Unlike CFDs where customers bet against the broker, perpetuals feature transparent order books benefiting traders. Vlad noted perpetuals are natural for leveraged exposure trading and have become an idea whose time has come, though he acknowledged other products like dated futures and options serve specific market needs better.
When listing real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain, Lighter encountered interesting edge cases like pre-IPO perpetuals, requiring decisions about settlement if IPOs don't occur, valuation methodology (implied market cap vs. share price), and timing of market listing. Stock tokens also enable capital efficiency through cross-margin strategies, allowing users to hold diversified portfolios while using them as collateral for derivative positions without tax events.
Regulatory clarity remains challenging in the U.S., with the SEC and CFTC developing separate frameworks rather than unified federal rules. Robinhood emphasized ensuring U.S. perpetuals maintain feature parity with on-chain versions (settling every second or 15 seconds) rather than creating inferior products through limited clearinghouses. Both companies report progress with regulators who are increasingly receptive to understanding blockchain mechanics.
Robinhood Chain, launched approximately 100 days before this panel, has shown strong early adoption. Removing barriers to entry and complexity has driven user enthusiasm. Integration of Lighter perpetuals directly in the Robinhood wallet (not via separate dApp browser) provides superior UX, and stock tokens' composability enables developers to build on top. Both executives expressed optimism about expansion once regulatory clarity enables U.S. and broader international availability.
About this episode
Are onchain markets about to become the default way the world trades? This week, Felix sits down live at DAS Singapore with Robinhood's Johann Kerbrat and Lighter's Vlad Novakovski to unpack the convergence of TradFi and crypto. We explore 24/7 trading, why perps beat CFDs, pre-IPO and commodity perps, the CFTC path for US perps, and Robinhood Chain's first 100 days. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 01:14 Why Finance Is Moving Onchain 04:17 Can 24/7 Markets Stay Liquid? 06:33 Why Perps Are Going Mainstream 09:59 Bringing Real Assets To Perps 13:10 Can The US Get Perps Right? 15:51 Connecting Traditional & Onchain Finance 18:15 What Robinhood Chain Has Learned FOLLOW GUESTS › Johann – https://x.com/JohannKerbrat › Vlad – https://x.com/vnovakovski FOLLOW THE SHOW › Forward Guidance – https://x.com/ForwardGuidance › Felix – https://x.com/fejau_inc › Telegram – https://t.me/+CAoZQpC-i6BjYTEx › Blockworks – https://x.com/Blockworks › DAS – https://x.com/blockworksDAS RESOURCES › Learn more about Blockworks Agentic Detection: https://blockworks.com/insights/introducing-agentic-detection-asset-monitoring-built-for-the-ai-era › Start building with the Blockworks Unified API https://blockworks.com/insights/introducing-the-blockworks-unified-api EVENTS › Join us at Digital Asset Summit London Nov 10-11 https://blockworks.com/events DISCLAIMER Nothing said on Forward Guidance is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Any views expressed are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Key Insights
- Robinhood's stock token data reveals that over 70% of trading volume occurs outside traditional exchange hours, indicating that institutional and retail demand for 24/7 market access is already substantial and not just theoretical.
- Vlad argues that the perpetual futures form factor is fundamentally more natural for leveraged exposure trading across multiple asset classes compared to alternatives, explaining why institutions from TradFi are adopting it despite CFDs existing for years.
- Both executives frame the U.S. regulatory process as potentially creating inferior perpetuals products through limited clearinghouses and longer settlement periods, which they are actively pushing back against with the CFTC to ensure on-chain versions maintain competitive technical features.
- Lighter encountered nuanced complications when listing pre-IPO perpetuals, including uncertainty about share count at IPO time and settlement procedures if IPOs fail, revealing that applying on-chain derivatives to traditional assets creates novel edge cases requiring novel solutions.
- The integration of perpetuals directly into Robinhood's wallet UI/UX (rather than as a separate dApp) has driven significantly stronger user engagement, suggesting that friction reduction in accessing on-chain products is a critical lever for mainstream adoption beyond just regulatory or technical improvements.
Topics
Transcript
Nothing said on Ford Guidance is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. All right, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the first Digital Asset Summit Asia edition. We are excited to be here live in Singapore on the first day of here, and very excited to be talking about bringing on-chain markets into the mainstream, which I think is one of the most dominant trends of 2026. So it's really exciting, really excited to be joined today by both of you. We'd love to just have you both introduce yourselves and a bit of what you do and what your focus is on within the context of bringing on-chain markets into the mainstream. Johan, maybe we can…
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