The Defiant - DeFi Podcast Robinhood’s Crypto Head Johann Kerbrat on Why Public Blockchains Will Win
Feb 11, 2026
Johann Kerbrat, Head of Crypto at Robinhood — leads crypto product strategy and engineering including their Layer 2 work. He discusses Robinhood’s Arbitrum-based Layer 2 testnet, tokenized stocks and real-world assets, how public chains can satisfy institutional compliance, and plans to bring DeFi primitives and self-custody UX to mainstream users.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Layer 2 Focuses On Financial-Grade Infrastructure
- Robinhood's Layer 2 aims to accelerate on-chain financial services with 24/7 trading, seamless bridging, and self-custody.
- The public testnet invites developers to build, verify apps, and give feedback before mainnet.
Permit Building But Gate App Integrations
- Open the chain permissionlessly so any developer can build on it to foster ecosystem growth.
- But gate integrations within the Robinhood app by product and compliance requirements.
Ethereum L2 Wins Over Building A New L1
- Building on Ethereum gave Robinhood the decentralization and security of a battle-tested network instead of starting a risky L1.
- It also provided existing liquidity and easy bridging to other VM chains to focus resources on product and compliance.