Robinhood has announced its next step in crypto with a Web3 wallet for users around the world. It is the first crypto wallet the company has launched and the first project in 2023.
Two alumnis of Stanford University, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhaat, founded Robinhood in 2014 as a financial platform to reduce the barrier for entry into the financial market for users.
The platform, which has ahuge focus on trading, especially crypto, has amassed more than 14 million active users and manages up to $64 billion in assets as of June 30th, 2022.
The desktop and mobile-friendly platform said that the new crypto wallet can function as a browser for Web3, allowing users to swap and transfer crypto assets including NFTs, but will be limited to iOS users while Android and other devices will be integrated later in the year.
Prior to the release date of the wallet, Robinhood ran a beta version, allowing 10,000 waitlisted people to use it and give feedback. According to the company, the plan is to grant access to 1 million users who have been on the waitlist.
Integrated with Polygon and Ethereum
The Robinhood crypto wallet is built in Polygon and has been integrated with the Ethereum blockchain allowing EVM-based assets to be used on it. In terms of similarities, the wallet looks similar to Metamask wallet and Coinbase wallet but is different.
The General Manager of Robinhood, Johann Kerbrat, said that the new wallet which is a standalone app will help users control their crypto assets and also have access to more features, such as connecting to dapps and NFT marketplaces.
“We built this product to solve the challenges that many users had using competing products, which include unintuitive design and high fees,” he noted.
As part of the company’s upgrade to serve more users, Robinhood launched Robinhood Retirement, a retirement service created to help people plan their retirement outside their traditional workplace systems, on January 12, 2023.
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