A New Arc: dYdX Labs Launches Arcus with Robinhood

dYdX Labs and Robinhood Crypto today announced the launch of Arcus, a decentralized exchange designed for trading tokenized equities and perpetual futures on Robinhood Chain. The platform is a joint effort between the two firms, built over the past year under the leadership of Eddie Zhang, who will serve as Arcus's CEO and founder.

Arcus was incubated at dYdX Labs, and dYdX founder Antonio will join the board of Arcus to guide strategy and long-term vision. An allocation of any future Arcus token will be reserved for the dYdX community, the announcement stated. Antonio noted that he remains the largest DYDX token holder and expressed confidence in Zhang's leadership.

The launch comes after dYdX Chain achieved full decentralization with open-source code, community control, over 200 markets, and more than 50 validators running order books. However, the announcement acknowledged that performance and user experience suffered under the decentralized chain model, leading to market share loss to competitors prioritizing speed, simplicity, and liquidity. Arcus aims to address these takeaways by focusing solely on building the best exchange for traders across speed, liquidity, and user experience.

The Arcus thesis rests on three pillars: distribution via Robinhood Chain, which has over 25 million users; access to 95 Stock Tokens and 35 real-world asset perps available for 24/7 trading; and community ownership. The platform is built to be owned by the community of traders it serves. Spot trading on Arcus is live immediately, with a perps waitlist now open.

dYdX v4 will continue to be supported, and user funds and positions on dYdX Chain will remain fully accessible. Arcus is a smart-contract protocol enabling self-custodial trading of Stock Tokens, cryptoassets, and perpetuals. It is not a regulated financial services provider and is unavailable in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and other restricted jurisdictions. The platform warns that trading involves significant risks, including price divergence, liquidity constraints, and potential loss of private keys.