Arcus chooses "stepfather" Robinhood Chain, while "biological father" dYdX awkwardly makes amends

Original Article: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Asher (@Asher_0210)

Early yesterday morning, Robinhood announced the official launch of its own Layer 2 network, Robinhood Chain, on the public mainnet. Built on the Arbitrum tech stack, the chain is positioned as institution-grade, permissionless, AI-native, and specifically designed for Real World Assets (RWA).

In other words, Robinhood's ambition is not merely to add another chain to the crypto industry, but to integrate stocks, RWAs, lending, trading, and on-chain financial products into its own unified infrastructure.

Major platforms entering the fray quickly attract key ecosystem players.

Leading protocols including Uniswap, 1inch, Lighter, Morpho, Chainlink, BitGo, Ethena, and EtherFi have announced support for Robinhood Chain, covering core crypto sectors such as trading, liquidity, lending, oracles, custody, and cross-chain functionality.

An overview of the Robinhood Chain ecosystem projects

However, amidst this ecosystem integration, Arcus, a new DEX launched by the dYdX team, has become the focal point of community discussion.

Community members are questioning: Is dYdX Labs shifting its focus towards Arcus? Will the existing dYdX Chain be marginalized? Can the DYDX token continue to capture protocol value in the future? And how will Arcus relate to the dYdX ecosystem?

Amidst these controversies, DYDX has fallen over 12% in the last 24 hours, with its current market capitalization temporarily standing at $108 million.

DYDX token price chart (last 7 days)

What is Arcus? 7×24 Hour Zero-Fee Trading of Tokenized Stocks

Arcus: A Decentralized Exchange Developed by the dYdX Team, Now with an Open Early Waitlist

Arcus is a decentralized exchange developed by the dYdX team, now live on Robinhood Chain. It offers 7×24 hour zero-fee trading for 95 tokenized stocks and perpetual contracts. Arcus supports tokenized trading of stocks, commodities, indices, and crypto assets. All tokenized stocks are issued and redeemable on Robinhood Chain, allowing for self-custody and integration with the DeFi ecosystem.

Arcus x Robinhood: Trade stocks and perpetuals around the clock

Currently, Arcus has opened an early access waitlist (link: https://waitlist.arcus.xyz/). Users can complete interactions by linking their X (Twitter) account and wallet.

Arcus early access waitlist is open

Furthermore, Arcus plans to support using tokenized stocks and crypto assets as collateral for perpetual contracts in the future, and intends to offer pre-IPO trading for popular private companies like OpenAI.

Future Arcus Tokens Will Be Distributed to the dYdX Community

At first glance, Arcus, the DEX developed by the dYdX team, targets this year's crypto narrative – tokenized stocks. However, the issue is that Arcus is not deployed on dYdX Chain. Instead, it operates on Robinhood Chain, developing as an independent product with its own infrastructure. This means dYdX Labs is telling a new growth story, but this story does not place dYdX Chain and the DYDX token at its core.

More subtly, dYdX founder Antonio Juliano stated in the latest dYdX documentation that "a portion of future Arcus tokens will be allocated to the dYdX community." While intended to reassure the existing community, this statement directly amplifies expectations for an Arcus token launch, leading many users to focus more on potential new airdrop opportunities.

Arcus tokens will be allocated to the dYdX community

Considering dYdX previously conducted one of the largest airdrops in the industry, once Arcus initiates trading incentives, point programs, or early user plans, it is likely to attract some traders and liquidity towards the new platform. For dYdX Chain, this means its already pressured trading volume and activity may face further fragmentation.

dYdX Founder Responds: Arcus is a New Product, dYdX Chain Will Not Shut Down

Addressing community concerns, dYdX founder Antonio Juliano explained that dYdX Chain has gone deep into decentralization, featuring an open-source architecture, community governance, over 200 markets, and more than 50 validators running the order book.

However, he acknowledged this path involved trade-offs in performance and user experience. As on-chain derivatives competition intensifies, the market is rewarding trading platforms with faster speed, simpler user experience, and more concentrated liquidity. Arcus was born against this backdrop.

Furthermore, Antonio stated that Eddie Zhang will serve as CEO and Founder of Arcus, while he himself will join the board, focusing on strategy and long-term vision. In other words, Arcus is not a new feature on dYdX Chain, but a separate new trading platform being developed by dYdX Labs.

For the existing community, Antonio stated that dYdX v4 will continue to be supported, and user funds and positions remain accessible on dYdX Chain. If Arcus issues a token in the future, a portion of the allocation will be reserved for the dYdX community, prioritizing users who have previously participated in dYdX trading, staking, validation, and community building.

Subsequently, the dYdX Foundation further emphasized that Arcus is an independent product built on independent infrastructure, and dYdX Chain will not be affected. DYDX remains the governance and staking token for dYdX Chain, with no changes to its mechanics, supply, or operational characteristics. There are currently no arrangements for token swap or migration.

However, the market's concern isn't just about whether dYdX Chain will continue to function.

The real question is, if Arcus generates significant trading volume and revenue, will dYdX Chain benefit from this growth? If Arcus issues a new token, what rights will DYDX holders have? How will dYdX Labs allocate future resources between Arcus and dYdX Chain?

Until these value-capture questions are clearly answered, Arcus represents a new story for dYdX Labs but presents an unsolved puzzle for DYDX holders.