Ethereum developer Ryan Berckmans defends Robinhood’s role in the ETH ecosystem

ChainCatcher report: Renowned Ethereum builder and investor Ryan Berckmans posted on X that the notion that Robinhood “gives back very little to ETH” is nonsense. They pay on-chain users and new ETH holders, run marketing campaigns to attract new enterprise customers envious of Robinhood’s success, help mature L1 hubs and L2 spokes, and half of Robinhood’s active users come from elsewhere on Ethereum, exerting healthy competitive pressure on Base. He stated that Ethereum alignment is a real concept—but not as Ethereum opponents portray it, focused solely on maximizing revenue and fees. Helping Ethereum and ETH grow is alignment; threatening Ethereum or ETH is opposition, as Lido did during its dominant era. Robinhood is one of the most Ethereum-aligned entities globally. Buying large amounts of ETH or forgoing fee revenue would be better—but it’s merely icing on an already massive cake. We don’t rely on Robinhood buying ETH to win. The next wave of Tom Lees will buy ETH—Wall Street Tom Lees, corporate Tom Lees, government Tom Lees, family office Tom Lees, sovereign wealth Tom Lees—they will be everywhere. ETH will rise from a store of value to trillions in value as Ethereum achieves global adoption. The two key metrics for measuring progress in store-of-value adoption are capital deployed in L1 applications and the number of sufficiently successful L2s; Robinhood helps grow the latter. We love Robinhood just as it is now.