Robinhood debuts new custody-free crypto wallet with Polygon to 10K beta users • TechCrunch

Robinhood is finally rolling out a beta version of its crypto wallet to 10,000 customers on its waiting list after announcing the product in May, CTO and general manager of crypto Johann Kerbrat told TechCrunch. The product is called Robinhood Wallet and will be the company’s first internationally available app, Kerbrat said.

The company revealed new details about the offering in conjunction with the beta launch, specifically that it will launch exclusively with Polygon, a popular layer-two blockchain that connects to Ethereum and makes the network faster and cheaper to use.

This means beta users will be able to purchase the Polygon MATIC token on Robinhood’s main exchange app and transfer it to the Robinhood wallet. They will also be able to access dApps directly on the Polygon network, including DeFi apps like Uniswap, Balancer, and Kyberswap, and metaverse games like Decentraland, a Polygon spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch.

Over time, the Robinhood team plans to build out multi-chain support for the wallet outside of the Polygon ecosystem, Robinhood crypto product manager Seong Seog Lee told TechCrunch.

“I think there are two or three main considerations [around going multi-chain], Lee said. “The first is that we want to get this first wallet out into the world and see what user feedback is like. I think the demand for multi-chain is something that we’re going to keep at the forefront if a lot of users are asking for it … I think number two is, if we believe that going multi-chain ends up delivering a better, more fluid decentralized trading experience, that’s also something that will drive us to go multi-chain. And the third is that in the future, when we’re looking at use cases like NFTs, we think multi-chain can be a great, great way to achieve this goal.”

Robinhood rolled out a custodial crypto wallet to its users earlier this year and says it plans to complete a full rollout of the non-custodial wallet to its 1 million+ waiting list users after the beta is complete, sometime before the end of 2022.

Beta users will be able to fund their wallets using USDC stablecoin tokens, trade and exchange crypto and connect to dApps to earn returns, according to the company. However, NFT marketplace integration and the ability to view NFTs in the Robinhood wallet won’t be available until public launch later this year, Kerbrat said.

Notably, Robinhood says it won’t charge Robinhood Wallet users network or gas fees for transactions, differentiating its offering from other popular non-custodial wallets like Metamask and Coinbase Wallet.

Lee said the gasless switching feature, in particular, is “an important step in reducing the friction for users to get started doing things on the chain.”

“We wanted to keep the functionality of what a decentralized trading experience allows you to do, which is to exchange from coin to coin. But at the same time, we wanted to simplify it into a mobile-friendly user interface,” Lee said.