Robinhood Launches Ethereum Layer-2, Venice AI Raises $65M, Crypto Markets Surge

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Today’s top news:

Crypto majors are very green as SOL jumps 10%; BTC +5% to $61.3k

Venice AI announces $65M raise at $1B valuation, creating crypto’s newest unicorn

Robinhood launches Robinhood Chain with tokenized stocks focus, Lighter perps

Lighter’s LIT jumps 15% to new local highs on back of Robinhood launch

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire responds to OUSD, says consortium stablecoins have a poor track record

🏦 Robinhood Launches an ‘AI-Native’ Ethereum Layer-2 With Tokenized Stocks

Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum-powered Ethereum layer-2. The company touts its new chain as “AI-native,” meaning it supports trading by AI agents directly onchain.

The network opened with integrations from BitGo and Chainlink and partnerships with Uniswap and Pleiades for market-making, and it’s designed to bridge Robinhood’s traditional brokerage with its crypto stack.

The centerpiece is Stock Tokens, onchain versions of shares in companies like Nvidia and Apple. On Robinhood Chain, users can drop those tokenized shares into lending pools and use them as collateral in DeFi. That turns a stock position into composable on-chain capital, the kind of thing that’s impossible inside a normal brokerage. Robinhood also opened perps trading directly in its wallet through the decentralized erp dex Lighter, and switched on Robinhood Earn for eligible US users, letting them lend the USDG stablecoin for around 7% APY.

HOOD shares closed up more than 8% to $108.65, up nearly 20% on the month, though still well off their highs. Lighter’s LIT token jumped 15% to $2.14 and fresh local highs on the back of their integration.

💸 Venice AI Hits $1 Billion Valuation as Voorhees Bets on Private AI

Erik Voorhees’ privacy-focused AI platform Venice AI raised $65 million at a $1 billion valuation, its first outside funding round and enough to make it a unicorn barely two years after launch. The round was led by crypto VC Dragonfly, with Coinbase Ventures and North Island Ventures joining.

Voorhees said the raise validates Venice’s mission to build a private, uncensored alternative to mainstream AI like ChatGPT. For those unfamiliar, Venice gives users access to more than 200 open and closed AI models across text, image, video, and code, while storing nothing on its own servers. Prompts are encrypted client-side and routed through an external proxy.

It has passed 3 million users, handles 1.7 million API calls a day, and is already profitable on roughly $70 million in annualized revenue, which is rare for an AI startup at this stage. The new capital goes toward buying GPUs and building its own data centers to cut its reliance on leased compute and lift margins.

The VVV token jumped 10% on the day to $13.50 and a $1B FDV, matching the company’s valuation. As for how to think about the VVV token vs company equity - that’s a conversation for another time…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors are very green, with SOL leading; BTC +5% at $61.3k; ETH +5% at $1,650; SOL +10% at $82; HYPE +4% at $64.90

BEAT (+20%), ZEC (+14%) and VVV (+11%)

Oil -1.5%at $67.50; Gold -0.3% at $4,070

Stock futures are slightly mixed; DOW +0.2%, Nasdaq -0.4%

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire responded to the Open USD launch, arguing USDC's decade-built liquidity and network moats are too deep to copy and that consortium stablecoins have a "dismal" track record

A new institutional-focused Ethereum nonprofit launched with backing from Joe Lubin, BitMine, and SharpLink, the second Ethereum initiative from the same trio in recent weeks

Cantor Fitzgerald analysts see a potential crypto market bottom forming in the coming months, pointing to the cycle and urging investors to focus on networks with durable value accrual

Standard Chartered announced a partnership with Circle to allow their institutional clients to access USDC

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

The Bitcoin ETFs saw $296M in net outflows on Wednesday; the ETH ETFs saw $15M in inflows

Trump-backed American Bitcoin will conduct a reverse stock split to meet Nasdaq listing requirements

Forward Industries added $38 million worth of Solana to its treasury following a string of failed acquisition attempts, doubling down on SOL accumulation.

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were very green; DOGE +4%, SHIB +2%, PEPE +7%, PENGU +5%, TRUMP even, BONK +6%

ANSEM (+24%), World (+200%) and Birb (+64%) led movers on Solana

Base movers included SERV (+44%) and POD (+20%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

World brought on-chain prediction markets to Solana’s Phantom wallet

Aave saw a spike in new wallets to a five-year high, a bullish onchain signal for the lending protocol as Kraken moves to take a stake

The Solana Foundation launched onchain governance with stake-weighted validator voting, a new mechanism called Solana Governance Proposals that lets any validator with at least 100,000 SOL delegated open a proposal

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?