[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] Optimism about the Ethereum ecosystem is rising as Robinhood's Ethereum layer-2 (L2) network grows rapidly. Some analysts say it remains a core market question whether L2 expansion can translate into demand for ETH itself and a higher price.

Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday, local time, that the Robinhood chain has become one of the major rollups in the Ethereum ecosystem in a short period since its July 1 launch.

Built on Arbitrum, the Robinhood chain saw more than $141 million worth of ETH bridged in within 2 weeks of launch. DefiLlama data showed the number of wallets holding ETH surpassed 500,000. As memecoin trading increased, daily decentralised exchange (DEX) volume at times exceeded Ethereum mainnet and Coinbase's Base.

The market also reacted positively. CoinGecko showed ETH rose about 15 percent to $1,825 on July 13 from $1,582 on July 1. Eric Trump welcomed ETH's strength. Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, said the case strengthens the investment thesis that "ETH is Money". He cited ETH's role as the base gas token for the Ethereum ecosystem and the fact that transactions on L2 are ultimately settled on Ethereum mainnet.

The industry is focusing on the business operator rather than the technology in this case. Existing L2 networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base have attracted users and volume, but most of the economic value stayed inside each rollup and the impact on ETH prices was limited. The Robinhood chain differs in that it is a network built by a listed retail broker with tens of millions of customers for trading tokenised stocks and real-world assets (RWA). Token Terminal said the Robinhood chain captured about 6.9 percent of all tokenised stock holders within days of launch.

Some view it as a signal of institutional adoption. Alex Gluchowski, founder and chief executive of Matter Labs, called the Robinhood case a "practical milestone". He said it matters that a regulated listed company, rather than a crypto-native firm, chose an Ethereum L2 as real business infrastructure.

Max Shannon, a senior research analyst at Bitwise, also described it as a sign that Ethereum adoption by large financial institutions is expanding. He mentioned the possibility that ETH could serve as a reserve asset for an institution-focused L2 ecosystem.

Still, some counter that L2 growth does not automatically link to higher ETH value. Lorenzo Valente of Ark Invest analysed that the Robinhood chain generated about $816,000 in revenue after launch, but only 0.15 percent of that returned to Ethereum mainnet.

Analytics firm Growthepie disputed the figure, saying the actual share was about 0.6 percent. But both calculations agree that the contribution to mainnet revenue is not large. Last week, the Robinhood chain generated the most gas fees among L2 networks, but the fees taken by Ethereum mainnet totalled about $4,400.

The key question is how rising L2 activity connects to ETH value. Gluchowski argued that ETH's long-term value depends less on simple fee revenue than on becoming a reserve asset used across the broader L2 ecosystem.

Users may pay fees in stablecoins or barely notice gas costs, but if more value is ultimately settled through Ethereum, ETH could function not just as a gas token but as the ecosystem's core monetary asset, he said.

But whether that scenario will materialise remains uncertain. Mike Dudas of 6th Man Ventures called the Robinhood chain "the strongest Ethereum tailwind in years". He also said it may not help the ETH price much if the "ETH is Money" narrative fails to take hold in the market.

Ethereum's scalability has improved with recent upgrades such as Pectra, but it is also seen as a task to address that rising transactions are not leading to higher fee income or greater ETH burning. Another key variable is how much ETH institutional investors will directly hold if trading in tokenised stocks and real-world assets becomes centred on stablecoins.

Ultimately, the Robinhood chain has shown the possibility that a large financial firm can use Ethereum infrastructure, but whether L2 growth alone will expand ETH demand and value remains a question the market will need to test.