Welcome to your weekly crypto newsletter. This week, the digital asset landscape is being shaped by two powerful forces operating at different ends of the adoption spectrum. On one side, the retail and traditional finance giant Robinhood has launched an aggressive, multi-pronged expansion of its crypto services, signaling a deep commitment to integrating digital assets into its core business. On the other, a new, highly specialized Layer-2 blockchain, Katana, has emerged from the Polygon ecosystem with a novel approach to solving some of decentralized finance’s most persistent challenges.

— Sum of total fees spent to use a particular blockchain. This tracks the willingness to spend and demand to use Bitcoin or Ether

— The net amount of inflows minus outflows of a specific crypto-asset going in/out of centralized exchanges

Robinhood has significantly deepened its involvement in the crypto space, rolling out a suite of advanced features that move it far beyond a simple buy/sell platform. This strategic push is designed to capture a more sophisticated user base and embed crypto infrastructure into its global financial offerings.Key developments in Robinhood’s expansion include:

Source: TradingView

This coordinated rollout demonstrates Robinhood’s ambition to become a comprehensive, all-in-one investment application powered by crypto rails. By building its own Layer-2 and integrating staking and derivatives, the company is not just facilitating access to crypto but is actively building the infrastructure to become a central player in a future tokenized financial system. This raises the question of whether Robinhood is building a centralized walled-garden competitor to DeFi or a crucial bridge that will onboard millions of mainstream users to decentralized protocols.

A new Layer-2 blockchain, Katana, has launched its public mainnet, attracting immediate and significant attention for its unique approach to decentralized finance. Developed in collaboration with Polygon Labs and the crypto trading firm GSR, Katana is purpose-built to address two of DeFi’s core problems: liquidity fragmentation and unsustainable, inflation-driven yields. Key aspects of Katana’s emergence include:

Source: @spaceharpoon in Dune Analytics

• As a graduate of Polygon’s “Agglayer Breakout Program” Katana is deeply integrated into the Polygon ecosystem. It has allocated 15% of its total KAT token supply for an airdrop to POL stakers, ensuring a built-in user base. Furthermore, a 1 billion KAT token liquidity mining program (10% of total supply) is set to incentivize participation across its DeFi protocols over the next two years.

Katana represents a new thesis in blockchain design, betting that specialized, application-focused chains can outperform general-purpose ones by offering a superior user experience and more sustainable economic models. Its strong launch and novel approach make it a critical project to watch in the evolving Layer-2 landscape.

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Robinhood Goes All In on Crypto While Katana Sharpens DeFi was originally published in Sentora on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.