Robinhood Earn is the company’s first onchain lending product, allowing eligible US customers to earn an estimated 7% APY on the $USDG stablecoin directly in Robinhood’s main app (@RobinhoodApp). Deposits are routed through a Morpho vault and loaned to borrowers in the chain, and the interest those borrowers pay flows back to users as returns. It went live on July 1 and is gradually rolling out across Robinhood’s user base.
The pitch is simple: make onchain revenue feel like a savings switch. The plumbing underneath is anything but, and there are four of them DeFi protocols, and especially Morpho, a distribution channel that none of them could have built alone.
How does Robinhood Earn work?
Users buy $USDGa dollar-backed stable currency issued by Paxos through the Global Dollar Network, within Robinhood Crypto (@RobinhoodCrypto). They then lend it out through a self-custodial wallet without leaving the app. The wallet is managed by the user via RHNC and Privy (@privy_io), so Robinhood never holds the keys or the money.
$USDG is deposited into a Morpho vault put together by Steakhouse Financial (@SteakhouseFi) and spread across Morpho’s credit markets. Borrowers post collateral from partner protocols to close $USDG loans, and the interest they pay finances the return of about 7%. The settlement is through Robinhood Chain. The interest rate is variable, so if the demand for loans decreases, the return can fall below 7%.
Robinhood also undertook insurance through Lloyd’s of London and RELM. The coverage is smaller than it sounds. The policy focuses on losses due to cyber attacks and smart contract exploits. It does not provide insurance against market losses, return compression or a $USDG depeg, and onchain lending are not FDIC or SIPC protected.
Why is this big news for Morpho, Ethena, Spark and Maple?
@Morpho is the core victory. It acts as the underlying credit network, meaning Robinhood’s nearly 28 million funded customers now sit on top of Morpho’s infrastructure whether they know it or not. For a protocol that positions itself as the credit layer behind mainstream fintech, that’s an important distribution milestone. Morpho had a total value of more than $7 billion across its chains, and closed a $175 million funding round in June, valuing it at more than $2 billion.
The other three protocols provide the lending side:
- Ethena provides collateral through its $USDe-pegged assets and was named as the primary collateral issuer for the vault.
- Maple contributes syrupUSDG, an institutional lending product backed by $USDG. Maple (@maplefinance) says it has made more than $22 billion in institutional loans since 2022.
- Spark completes initial collateral markets.
Steakhouse Financial, which operates the vault, manages approximately $2.2 billion across 51 Morpho vaults as of July 8. That management layer allows Robinhood to ship an on-chain product with a defined risk framework around it.
What is Robinhood Chain and why is the TVL rising?
Robinhood Earn settles on Robinhood Chain, the company’s permissionless Ethereum Layer 2 built on the Arbitrum stack. It launched its public mainnet on July 1 at the “Robinhood Presents: The World is Flat” keynote in London, and is pitched as an institutional home for tokenized real-world assets, including Robinhood’s Stock Tokens.
The launch week numbers are the headline. Robinhood Chain’s total value exceeded $100 million within a week and reached nearly $106 million as of July 8, up about 159% in 24 hours, according to DefiLlama. For a chain that is days old, nine numbers is a real signal.
Of that approximately $106 million, approximately $90 million is in Morpho, at Uniswap (@Uniswap) a distant second at about $14 million. The biggest push came from Ethena (@ethena) sowing about $50 million into the Steakhouse $USDG safe. Robinhood also covers gas costs for the first 90 days of the chain.
Early liquidity in a new chain typically comes from capital from DeFi countries looking for returns and incentives before retail arrives, and Robinhood Chain is no exception.
Sources:
- Robinhood Newsroom July 1 official announcement about the Robinhood Chain mainnet, Robinhood Earn, the estimated 7% $USDG returns, and Lloyd’s of London and RELM insurance.
- Morpho Morpho’s announcement confirms that it will support Robinhood Earn, with Steakhouse managing the vault and Robinhood Chain the settlement layer.
- DefiLlama Live TVL, stablecoin market cap and DEX volume data for Robinhood Chain.
- Steakhouse financial Curator’s breakdown of the Earn vault’s three collateral markets and the broader footprint of Steakhouse’s Morpho vault.